Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder Imran Khan’s former wife, Jemima Goldsmith, has urged the British government to break its silence over the alleged mistreatment of her ex-husband during his incarceration in Adiala Jail.
“Prime Minister [Andy Burnham] and Foreign Secretary [Ed Miliband]: how much longer will Britain remain silent?” she wrote on X. “For three years the father of my two sons, and Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, has been brutally penalized by his political opponents,” she alleged, claiming he has “endured 3 years of solitary confinement.”
Maintaining he had been denied contact with his family for nearly 10 months, she claimed he had been deprived of the most basic human contact, denied access to books, lawyers and doctors. Asserting that the international human-rights standards are unequivocal, she said the U.N.’s Nelson Mandela Rules bar solitary confinement for more than 15 consecutive days, amounting it to torture. “He has endured this treatment not for 15 days, but for three years,” she added.
Referring to the Supreme Court order directing Khan’s shift to hospital, she noted it had ordered his 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,” she claimed.
She reminded the U.K. government that the PTI founder has “deep and lifelong ties” to Britain as he studied at Oxford University, captained Oxford University cricket and spent years playing county cricket in England. “His [Imran] relationship with this country [U.K.] stretches back more than half a century,” she wrote. “His charitable activities were internationally recognized, and include building the only free cancer hospital in Pakistan as well as a university.”
Jemima noted she has repeatedly appealed to the UK government to intervene. “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,” she added.