- Jemima raises her voice on X for ex-husband.
- She urges British PM, foreign secretary in post.
- Jemima says Imran has long history with UK.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder Imran Khan’s former wife, Jemima Goldsmith, has urged the UK government to step in and not remain silent over the alleged treatment being meted out to her ex-husband.
“Prime Minister @andyburnham and Foreign Secretary @Ed_Miliband: how much longer will Britain remain silent?” Jemima, the former wife who shares two sons with the ex-prime minister, wrote in a post on X.
Imran’s family and party have long raised concerns over his health, with the Supreme Court finally issuing an order last week for him to be transferred to a private hospital from Adiala jail.
However, the government authorities shifted him to Pims, a public hospital, citing security concerns due to the crowd gathered outside, and later shifted him back to Adiala jail in Rawalpindi after a medical board cleared him.
Imran, the cricketer-turned-politician, aged 73, has been in jail in Rawalpindi since August 2023, convicted in a string of cases that he and his party maintain were “politically driven” following his ouster in 2022.
Jemima, in her post on the PTI founder, who is the father of Kasim Khan and Suleiman Khan, said: “For three years the father of my two sons, and Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, has been brutally penalised by his political opponents.”
She claimed that he has “endured 3 years of solitary confinement”.
The British socialite further said: “For nearly ten months now his family has been denied contact with him. He has been deprived of the most basic human contact, denied access to books, lawyers and doctors.”
The international human-rights standards are unequivocal, she added, and under the UN’s Nelson Mandela Rules, solitary confinement lasting more than 15 consecutive days is prohibited and amounts to torture. “He has endured this treatment not for 15 days, but for three years.”
Jemima added that Pakistan’s Supreme Court has now intervened, ordering 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 reminded the UK 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 [UK] stretches back more than half a century. His charitable activities were internationally recognised, and include building the only free cancer hospital in Pakistan as well as a university.”
She added that 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.”
