Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan has now spent 100 days and counting without contact with his legal team, a top aide has said, raising fresh concerns over due process and the fairness of the ongoing legal proceedings against him.
As well as being denied access to his defence lawyers, Mr Khan is being held in solitary confinement and has not been seen or heard from by visitors of any kind in almost three months.
Sayed Zulfiqar Bukhari, a spokesperson for Mr Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party and close aide, told The Independent that it was “heartbreaking” to see the way the former cricket icon has been cut off from the outside world.
The 73-year-old, who was ousted as prime minister in a no-confidence vote in 2022 and arrested in August 2023, is facing various charges in more than 100 cases, ranging from leaking state secrets to selling state gifts. Pakistan’s courts have thrown out a number of the charges against him, but in December, he and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were sentenced to an additional 17 years in prison each in a corruption case involving the under-priced purchase of luxury state gifts.
Mr Khan’s party says all of the cases against him are politically motivated, and international observers have expressed concern at the way PTI were sidelined by the authorities at the country’s last election.
Mr Bukhari said that it was “absurd” how Mr Khan was being denied access to his lawyers even as the authorities continue to pursue a multitude of cases against him, and that it was being done “because the authorities do not want any communication with Imran Khan”.
“They know that whenever he speaks, it generates enormous public attention and noise, and offers guidance to the country, even from within a small jail cell,” he said.
“Unfortunately, there is no rule of law. The courts have been completely paralysed and are taking no action. The current judicial system has left us helpless because nothing is being done in accordance with the rule of law or any meaningful justice system.”
The last person to see Mr Khan alive was his sister, Uzma Khan, who visited him in jail on 2 December. She said his health was “perfectly fine” but that he was struggling mentally with solitary confinement. “When I met with him, he was very angry,” she said, quoting him as saying that the “mental torture” of his conditions is “worse than physical abuse”.
Prior to that visit, no one was allowed to see Mr Khan for months, sparking growing rumours about his health or surreptitious relocation, until his sisters began staging a sit-in protest outside the Adiala jail where he is being kept.
His other sister, Aleema Khan, told Independent Urdu earlier that she believes the episode was a deliberate “test run” to gauge public reaction to rumours of the popular political leader’s death.
Mr Khan’s party said his denial of legal counsel “over such an extended period meets the threshold of arbitrary detention under international law”.
It said it breaches the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Pakistan is a signatory, which guarantees accused persons the right to communicate with legal counsel of their choosing, and to have adequate time and facilities to prepare a defence.
PTI said the restrictions violate the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, which require authorities to ensure detainees have prompt, regular, confidential and unhindered access to legal counsel without intimidation, interference or delay.
It said the treatment amounted to “inhuman or degrading treatment”, particularly in the context of what it described as politically motivated prosecutions.
Pakistan’s authorities have not publicly responded to the latest claims. They have previously denied any mistreatment and say Mr Khan is receiving all facilities available to ordinary prisoners.
Mr Khan’s arrest came just a few months after he revealed to The Independent that he had suffered lasting nerve damage in an earlier assassination attempt. It triggered unprecedented nationwide protests before the authorities brutally cracked down on PTI workers and members, arresting thousands.
Mr Khan has claimed that the no confidence vote that led to his ouster and subsequent criminal cases were orchestrated by the country’s powerful military, acting at the direction of the American government, to keep him away from power. Pakistan’s new government and military, as well as Washington, have denied the accusations.
Mr Bukhari, who has fled Pakistan and is now based in the UK, said the only thing likely to end Mr Khan’s incarceration at this point would be a popular uprising.
“Ultimately, any major movement will have to come from within Pakistan, driven by the people themselves. There will come a point when the entire nation comes together – not only over Imran Khan, but over the many injustices taking place across the country. The failure of this hybrid government will eventually spill onto the streets. When people have had enough, there will be consequences,” he said.
