Imran Khan

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Imran Khan  link (Cricketer, Politician)
Born	Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi 5 October 1952 Lahore, West Punjab, Dominion of Pakistan
Nationality	Pakistan
Alma mater	Keble College Oxford
Children	2
Spouses	Jemima Khan, Reham Khan, Bushra Bibi
ex-Pakistani Prime Minister

Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi is a Pakistani politician and former cricketer who was the 22^nd Prime Minister of Pakistan from August 2018 to April 2022.

Imprisoned

Amid a constitutional crisis, Imran Khan became the first Prime Minister to be removed from office through a no-confidence motion in April 2022. In August, he was charged under anti-terror laws after accusing the police and judiciary of detaining and torturing an aide. In November 2022, Imran Khan survived an assassination attempt during a political rally in Wazirabad, Punjab.

In August 2023, Police arrested Imran Khan in the eastern city of Lahore after a court sentenced him to three years in prison for illegally selling state gifts. Khan’s lawyer Intezar Panjotha said:

“We are filing a petition against the decision in the High Court.”

In a video recorded before his arrest and posted on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, Khan called on his supporters to take to the streets in protest.

“I only have one request, one appeal for you. You must not sit quietly inside your homes. The struggle I am doing is not for my own self, it’s for my nation, for you. For the future of your children.

“If you don’t stand up for your rights, you will live lives of slaves and slaves don’t have a life.”

Appeals for humane treatment

Cricketers

In August 2026, former cricket captains urged the Pakistani PM to allow Imran Khan to have 'humane treatment and proper medical care' in prison:

Dear Prime Minister,

Six months ago, fourteen former international cricket captains wrote to you and the Pakistani government appealing for humane treatment and proper medical care for Imran Khan. We wrote then not as politicians, but as former colleagues and rivals who share a bond forged on the cricket field - one that transcends the borders and disputes that too often divide countries.

We write again now - joined by seven further former captains - because of what has reportedly just occurred.

Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered that Imran Khan be transferred to hospital for examination by a medical board that was to include his own personal physicians and his sister, Dr Uzma Khan. The Court also reinstated weekly family visits. These were very welcome steps.

Concerningly, Mr Khan's hospital stay lasted only a few hours. He was examined by a state-appointed team rather than the board the Court had directed, declared "medically fit," and returned to Adiala Jail before that board could complete its work. His family and legal team say this falls short of what the Court ordered.

We do not presume to adjudicate Pakistan's domestic legal processes. That is not our place, and it was not the spirit in which we wrote in February. But we do ask, again, respectfully:

• That the medical board directed by the Supreme Court — including Mr Khan's own doctors — be permitted to complete a full and independent assessment of his health, particularly the reported loss of vision in his right eye.

• That the weekly family visits reinstated by the Court be honoured without interruption or administrative delay.

• That whatever the outcome of that medical assessment, the treatment recommended by it be provided without delay.

Imran Khan is 73 years old and has now spent more than three years in custody. Whatever the legal and political arguments surrounding his case, the basic decency of ensuring a court-ordered medical process is actually completed is not, in our view, a controversial request.

It is one we believe every nation that plays this game would recognise as fair.

We hope this matter can be resolved expeditiously and with the dignity Mr Imran Khan deserves.

Yours in cricket,

Michael Atherton, Alex Blackwell, Allan Border, Michael Brearley, Greg Chappell, Ian Chappell, Belinda Clark, Alastair Cook, Michael Gatting, Sunil Gavaskar, Lee Germon, Adam Gilchrist, David Gower, Kim Hughes, Nasser Hussain, Clive Lloyd, Kapil Dev, Arjuna Ranatunga, Andrew Strauss, Dilip Vengsarkar, Steve Waugh, John Wright.

Ex-wife

On 24 August 2026, Jemima Goldsmith posted on X:

Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband: how much longer will Britain remain silent?

For three years the father of my two sons, and Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, has been brutally penalised by his political opponents, in a personal vendetta by Army Chief, Asim Munir, which according to the UN, amounts to torture and which is now taking a potentially fatal toll on his physical and mental health.

He has endured 3 years of solitary confinement. For nearly ten months now his family has been denied contact with him. He has been deprived of the most basic human contact, denied access to books, lawyers and doctors.

The international human rights standards are unequivocal. Under the UN’s Nelson Mandela Rules, solitary confinement lasting more than 15 consecutive days is prohibited and amounts to torture.

He has endured this treatment not for 15 days, but for three years.

Pakistan’s own Supreme Court has now intervened: ordering comprehensive medical treatment, access to his personal doctor, regular family visits and twice-weekly calls with his sons.

Yet those orders are being defied.

This is no longer simply a Pakistani political matter. It is a human rights emergency.

He has deep and lifelong ties to Britain. He studied at Oxford University, captained Oxford University cricket and spent years playing county cricket in England. His relationship with this country stretches back more than half a century. His charitable activities were internationally recognised, and include building the only free cancer hospital in Pakistan as well as a university.

His sons, my two boys, Sulaiman and Kasim, are British citizens. They have been forced to watch their father’s health decline from thousands of miles away, prevented from visiting him, denied visas, publicly threatened by government officials with arrest themselves, and even denied court-mandated regular phone calls.

I have repeatedly appealed to the UK government to intervene. Purported attempts at back channelling have evidently failed. The previous Foreign Secretary David Lammy informed me in writing that Britain would not intervene if my sons, British citizens, are arrested when they travel to Pakistan to visit their father.

@FCDOGovUK: Britain must now speak out publicly and unequivocally. Demand that Pakistan comply with its own Supreme Court; restore Imran Khan’s medical access, his right to see his family, end his prolonged isolation and uphold his fundamental human rights.

Pakistan is a Commonwealth country. Britain has a long and proud tradition of standing against arbitrary detention, inhumane treatment and the denial of fundamental rights. Those principles mean very little if we invoke them only selectively and neglect them when inconvenient.

This an appeal to the new Burnham government to please now do the right thing.

2022 death threats

Indian press reported in March 2022 that:

"Security agencies of Pakistan have reported a 'plot' for the assassination of Prime Minister Imran Khan". According to these reports, "a foreign nation sent a message that he needs to be removed or Pakistan will face consequences".

Interviewed by Julian Assange

In 2012, Imran Khan was interviewed by Julian Assange:

"The blossoming of Khan's political credibility began with his boycott of the 2008 elections, a decision taken because 'they were being manipulated by the Bush administration', and his warning that they would be 'a disaster for the people of Pakistan'. Four years on and corruption scandals and the devastation of the War on Terror have given serious weight to Khan's campaign. In this dramatic interview, he expands on the need for a fundamental change in what he calls Pakistan's 'client master' relationship with the US, a supposed ally that 'did not trust us and actually came and killed someone on our own soil. Are we a friend, or an enemy?'"

Reprised

In August 2023, the Julian Assange interview was reprised on Twitter:

The US asked for Imran Khan to be removed as PM because his lack of alignment with the US and NATO in Ukraine.

Watch on YouTube

Julian Assange: "I saw these videos of your rallies last night, so I think this is great but I worry that you're going to get blown up."

"Khan is a critic of US foreign policy. In 2012, Julian Assange interviewed Khan about US occupation of Afghanistan and the war on terror: