Family members of Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan are concerned about the 73-year-old's health in a Rawalpindi prison, accusing authorities of preventing him from accessing appropriate medical care. Khan's London-based sons, Sulaiman and Kasim Khan, told DW they have received "little to no information" about their father's health condition. "When we last spoke to him on the phone back in March, he said that he had lost 85% of the vision in his right eye and that despite his complaints, it was neglected for months," they said.
The brothers added that their father was being held in a tiny cell and has been allowed outside for only one or two hours a day. They also allege that the elder Khan was kept in isolation from family, lawyers, and a personal physician for 10 months before he was briefly allowed to see two of his sisters. This comes amid the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party's planned protest march on September 27 to exert pressure on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's government for Khan's release.
Khan's sons are urging authorities to allow their father to receive an independent medical assessment and restore regular access to his family and medical team. "We are asking the Pakistani authorities to obey the Supreme Court orders immediately and shift our father to Shifa International Hospital so that he can be assessed by independent doctors," they said. They also called for Khan to be allowed his mandated family visits, phone calls with his sons, and access to a personal physician.
Despite being in jail, Khan remains at the center of Pakistan's political confrontation between the PTI and the country's powerful military. He also remains a popular political figure in Pakistan, despite being ousted from office in 2022 in a parliamentary no-confidence vote. Amid plans for a PTI protest march set for this weekend, Khan's three sisters were detained in the Punjab capital of Lahore on Monday.
The detention orders cited concerns that the sisters were a threat to public safety and maintenance of public order. All three were ordered to be held for 30 days under a public order ordinance. Khan's sons told DW the arrests were intended to intimidate their family and supporters before the planned protest rally.
"Our family members who have been arbitrarily taken into custody must be released immediately," they said. "The abductions of our family members in the middle of the night, with no reason given, were purely to intimidate them," they added. Khan was ousted as prime minister in 2022 and jailed the following year on what he says are politically motivated corruption charges.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
