The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Thursday threatened to bar the national team from continuing a match against the British team if Sky Sports aired an interview with the sons of incarcerated former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
According to ESPN CricInfo, the PCB lodged a formal complaint about the interview, which was broadcast during the lunch interval on day one of the second Test between England and Pakistan. The 18-minute, prerecorded interview was briefly delayed, but was eventually aired in full. The match also resumed as normal despite the threat from the PCB.
Conducted by former England captain Michael Atherton, the interview largely focused on Kasim and Sulaiman’s concerns over their father’s health in prison. They reiterated claims that Khan had lost a majority of his vision in one eye, was imprisoned in a “very small cell,” and lacked recreational materials. They also referred to a medical report submitted in the Supreme Court, stating he had elevated blood pressure “due to the stress of isolation and solitary confinement.”
Claiming their father’s captors were not “acting with any kind of strategy,” Kasim alleged “they” were “just blatantly trying to kill him in there. Keep him in as long as possible, and silence him.”
Referring to Khan’s recent meetings with his sisters—Noreen Niazi met him on Tuesday while Dr. Uzma Khan met him on Saturday—they claimed he had related his imprisonment to that of other political prisoners who have died in prison. “Right now it is worse than ever, completely isolating him more than 23 hours a day in a cell,” they alleged.
“Right now, it’s really crucial for us that he gets proper treatment,” they said. “He had an eye patch on for the eye situation, seemed visibly stressed, and that is something that is very hard for us to imagine because he embodies a very calm, assured presence, every time I have ever seen him, including being at gun point. A car we were in was robbed, and he was the calmest person there, including the robbers,” Kasim told Atherton.
Discussing the Supreme Court order to shift Khan to Islamabad’s Shifa International Hospital for medical examination and treatment, Sulaiman said it had evoked cautious optimism. “Our fears were confirmed when instead of being taken to the private hospital, where he was meant to be taken, he was just taken to a government medical facility for a few hours, and then taken straight back to jail,” he said.
During the interview, Khan’s sons also claimed they had tried to visit their incarcerated “multiple times,” but have not been able to secure visas. “We have been disappointed,” said Sulaiman. “Whenever we have reached out to the foreign office, or the previous foreign secretary, there has just been such a feeble response. They say, ‘that is terrible to hear, we sympathize’, and then we hear nothing,” he said.
“[Under the previous U.K. government] there wasn’t much action, in fact there was zero support,” said Kasim. “They actively said we shouldn’t go to Pakistan, and they wouldn’t be able to support us if we did. We are hoping that with the new foreign secretary, with Ed Miliband, we might be able to have a bit more success and we might be able to see him,” he added.
The 73-year-old cricketer-turned-politician has been in prison since August 2023. His lawyers and family have repeatedly alleged his health has deteriorated in custody, with the government maintaining his medical assessments have found no condition requiring urgent treatment.