Pakistan: Family claims Imran Khan enduring ‘unimaginable mistreatment’

Islamabad/Lahore: Pakistan’s opposition alliance continued its sit-in in Islamabad for the fifth day on Tuesday, demanding better health facilities for jailed former premier Imran Khan, as his family claimed that he is enduring “unimaginable mistreatment” in prison.

The sit-in is led by the Tehreek-e-Tahaffuz-e-Ain Pakistan (TTAP), an alliance set up last year to protest the constitution of the country.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is its main force, while the alliance is led by Mahmood Khan Achakzai, a Pashtun tribal leader from Balochistan who is also the Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly.

The group launched the protest on Friday at two places in Islamabad, including near the parliament building and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa House, the official building of the provincial government in the capital. The sit-ins were prompted by the concerns regarding the health of Khan, who recently told a visiting lawyer that he lost about 85 per cent of vision in the right eye due to alleged lack of health services, a charge rejected by the government.

The protestors have vowed to continue the sit-ins until Khan is shifted for specialist care to a private hospital.

The PTI has cut off Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province from the rest of the country by road blockades, demanding that Khan be immediately shifted to the hospital and allowing his doctors to see him.

Khan has been in jail since August 2023 in multiple cases.

“Imran Khan, a global celebrity, a philanthropist, and former prime minister of Pakistan, has endured unimaginable mistreatment in prison under the directives of ‘Asim Law,’ now facing irreversible damage to his right eye as a direct consequence,” Khan’s sister Noreen Niazi said in a post on X.

She said it has been established that Khan’s medical complaints were ignored “unduly and unjustly” for three months while he was kept in “illegal solitary confinement”.