Former cricket star and Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan now lives in a 6ft-by-8ft prison cell in the Adiala prison in Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s fourth-largest city. According to his family, his conditions are dire: Khan, 73, prime minister from 2018 to 2022, has been placed in indefinite solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, and is given dirty water to drink. He has lost 85% of his eyesight and his health is failing.
In a recent interview, his sons Kasim and Sulaiman, who are British citizens, accused Pakistan’s authorities of “trying to kill” their father. Pakistani officials reacted with fury; it briefly appeared that they might order a Test match against England to be abandoned. Pakistan’s government issued a statement claiming, against all the evidence, that Khan is actually being held in a seven-cell compound with home-cooked food, a TV and regular visits.
Why is the case so sensitive?
Because Khan is, to many, a national hero, and probably Pakistan’s most popular politician. Born to an affluent Pashtun family in Lahore, Khan graduated from Keble College, Oxford, in 1975, and captained Pakistan’s cricket team to World Cup victory in 1992; in Britain, he is still best known as a sportsman and a playboy, who later married Jemima Goldsmith.
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But in Pakistan he became a prominent philanthropist, and then a very successful – and very divisive – populist politician. In 1996, he founded the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice, or PTI) party, railing against the corruption he views as endemic among the two political dynasties that have dominated Pakistani politics, the Bhutto and Sharif families. His supporters cast him as a brave challenger to a venal establishment, who fought for years to fix a broken system; his critics say he is irresponsible and has polarised Pakistani politics, by casting all opponents as crooks.
What did he do in office?
Khan became PM by a slim majority, after winning the backing of Pakistan’s military – which has intermittently ruled the country and still wields great power – in a contest marred by allegations of vote-rigging and intimidation. In power, Khan proved erratic, and his record was at best mixed. He promised to end corruption within 90 days; but according to Transparency International, it actually worsened.
Pakistan’s economic woes continued on his watch: in 2019, he was forced to negotiate a $6 billion bailout from the IMF. Although he expanded the provision of healthcare, pledges to build an “Islamic welfare state” went unfulfilled. And his independent foreign policy (he was seen as pro-Taliban, and had close links to China and Russia) was criticised in the West. Meanwhile, he worked with Pakistan’s generals to control the media and crack down on opponents, some of whom were jailed.
How did he lose power?
In April 2022, having apparently fallen out with key figures in the military, he became the first Pakistani PM to be ousted in a parliamentary confidence vote. Khan claimed that the US and Pakistan’s military had conspired to remove him, and launched street protests. Within days, news outlets in Pakistan began following an army diktat to stop referring to him by name (instead calling him “the founding chairman of the PTI”).
In November 2022, he was shot in the leg at a rally, which he also blamed on the military. The new government, meanwhile, sought to bury Khan in dozens of legal cases; in May 2023, he was arrested by paramilitaries who smashed through the windows of Islamabad’s high court, where he was appearing on corruption charges. Fresh protests erupted. Although initially bailed, Khan has been in jail since that August.
What is he accused of?
Khan has faced charges in more than 100 cases, including bribery, corruption and the leaking of state secrets. He is now serving a 14-year sentence following a corruption conviction in which prosecutors alleged that he and his third wife, Bushra Bibi received land worth up to $25 million through a charitable trust, as a bribe from a real-estate tycoon. All Khan’s other convictions have been overturned or suspended; few were of exceptional gravity by the standards of Pakistani politics.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Federation for Human Rights have criticised Khan’s incarceration; and, in July 2024, a UN working group said that his detention had “no legal basis” and was part of a “campaign of repression” against him and the PTI.
How has Khan responded?
In October 2022, Pakistan’s Election Commission disqualified him from running for political office for five years. The PTI has also been prevented from using its cricket bat symbol on ballot papers – a setback in a country with low literacy rates. But Khan has been undeterred. He continues to protest his innocence from jail, attracting widespread support. Using AI-generated audio clips and images, he held virtual online rallies in the run-up to the February 2024 general election, in which candidates backed by his PTI party won an unexpected victory. However, it fell short of an outright majority, and has sat in opposition since; Shehbaz Sharif of the PML(N) took over as PM, at the helm of an eight-party coalition.
Could he be released?
For the moment, his prospects appear bleak. Pakistan’s supreme court ruled in August that Khan should be transferred to hospital to undergo medical checks; instead, he was taken to a government facility for cursory checks, and was then sent straight back to 23-hour isolation. Given that some 48 Pakistani political leaders have been assassinated or executed, some observers fear the government plans to keep Khan in prison until he dies. Western governments, meanwhile, have remained largely silent about his treatment – apparently wary of angering a strategically important nuclear power.
