Imran Khan in prison: His sons’ warnings raise fresh questions over human rights in Pakistan
For three years, Imran Khan has remained behind bars while Pakistan continues to argue over whether his imprisonment represents the lawful prosecution of a former prime minister or the political persecution of an opposition leader. Now, renewed warnings from his two sons have brought the conditions of his detention back into international focus.
Speaking to Al Jazeera this week, Sulaiman and Kasim Khan said they were increasingly concerned about their father’s condition after hearing that he was suffering from severe anxiety and appeared increasingly agitated. The interview came only days after Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered that Khan be transferred from prison to a private hospital for medical treatment, an order subsequently challenged by the government. Khan was instead taken to a state-run hospital for a brief medical examination before being returned to prison. (Al Jazeera)
The dispute is therefore about far more than one politician’s health. Khan’s treatment has become part of a wider struggle over political opposition and state power in Pakistan, raising questions about what protections remain for a former head of government when the institutions responsible for his imprisonment are themselves accused of suppressing dissent. Those questions have become increasingly difficult to dismiss given the international human-rights scrutiny surrounding his detention.
Who is Imran Khan?
Khan is one of Pakistan’s most consequential political figures of the modern era. Before entering politics, he was an international cricket star and captain of the Pakistan team that won the 1992 Cricket World Cup. He later founded the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party and became prime minister in 2018.
His government was removed through a parliamentary no-confidence vote in April 2022. Khan subsequently became the country’s most prominent opposition figure, campaigning against the political establishment and particularly against Pakistan’s powerful military.
He was arrested in August 2023 and has remained imprisoned ever since. His imprisonment has been accompanied by a sprawling series of criminal cases. Khan has faced more than 100 cases, many relating to corruption and allegations concerning his conduct while in office. Several convictions have since been overturned, suspended or otherwise fallen away, although other convictions remain in force and further proceedings are ongoing. Khan denies wrongdoing and maintains that the cases against him are politically motivated. (Reuters)
That legal history cannot be separated from the political circumstances in which it has unfolded. Khan has faced more than 100 cases since his removal from office, with charges ranging from corruption to the disclosure of state secrets. Several convictions have subsequently been overturned, suspended or otherwise fallen away, while others remain subject to appeal. Khan and his supporters have consistently argued that the cases are being used to keep him out of politics and weaken the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), an allegation the government rejects. (Reuters)
There is a wider context to those claims. In the run-up to Pakistan’s 2024 general election, PTI candidates were prevented from contesting under the party’s electoral symbol and were forced to stand as independents. Despite this, PTI-backed candidates won more seats than any other group, although observers raised serious concerns about the fairness of the election. Human-rights organisations have also documented arrests of PTI supporters, restrictions on protests and a broader deterioration in the space available for political dissent. (GOV.UK)
None of this means that Khan should be immune from criminal prosecution. A political leader can commit crimes, and allegations against a former prime minister should be investigated rather than dismissed because they are politically inconvenient. But the reverse is equally important: the existence of a conviction does not, by itself, establish that the process which produced it was free from political interference.
That distinction is at the heart of the controversy surrounding Khan. The question is not simply whether he has been convicted, but whether Pakistan’s institutions have been able to distinguish the administration of justice from the suppression of a powerful opposition movement. When a government is simultaneously prosecuting an opposition leader, restricting the political party he founded and facing accusations of suppressing dissent, the legitimacy of those prosecutions deserves scrutiny rather than assumption.
For Khan’s supporters, this is evidence of a deliberate attempt to remove an electoral threat. For the Pakistani government, it is the prosecution of a politician who is not above the law. Both claims exist within the same political reality, and neither should be treated as self-evidently true.
That is precisely why the conditions of Khan’s imprisonment matter. If the state is exercising legitimate judicial authority, it should be able to withstand scrutiny over how that authority is being exercised. And if the criminal justice system is being used as a political instrument, the fact that its decisions are formally expressed through courts does not make the underlying conduct democratic.
When imprisonment becomes a human-rights question
The controversy surrounding Khan has increasingly moved beyond the question of whether he should be imprisoned and towards the conditions in which he is being held.
In 2024, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Khan’s detention was arbitrary and said it resulted from the exercise of rights protected under international law. In December 2025, a UN expert also raised concerns over reports that Khan had been held in solitary confinement for prolonged periods, including allegations that he was confined to his cell for approximately 23 hours a day. (OHCHR)
These are significant findings because human rights do not disappear at the prison gates. International standards place responsibilities on governments to ensure that prisoners are treated humanely and have access to appropriate medical care, legal representation and contact with the outside world.
The UN Committee Against Torture also raised concerns about Khan’s situation in May 2026, referring to previous findings concerning the arbitrary nature of his detention. (OHCHR)
The allegations surrounding his treatment have become particularly serious because of his health.
In February, Khan’s lawyers told Pakistan’s Supreme Court that he had lost approximately 85 percent of the vision in his right eye. The court subsequently ordered a medical review. His family and political representatives have repeatedly disputed official assurances about his health and called for access to independent medical professionals. (Reuters)
In August, the Supreme Court went further, ordering that the 73-year-old be moved from Adiala prison to Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad and that he receive treatment under the supervision of a medical panel including his personal doctor. The government challenged the order, arguing that Khan could instead be treated at a public hospital. (Reuters)
The eventual transfer only deepened the dispute. Khan was taken to a government hospital, examined and returned to prison within hours. His party has accused the authorities of defying the Supreme Court’s instructions, while the government has cited security concerns and defended the medical care available to him. (Reuters)
What are his sons saying?
Sulaiman and Kasim Khan’s intervention comes at a politically significant moment. Their Al Jazeera interview is not simply a family appeal for information about their father’s health. It is a public challenge to the Pakistani authorities’ account of his imprisonment, and to the restrictions that have surrounded discussion of his treatment since his arrest.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, the brothers raised concerns about Khan’s psychological and physical condition and questioned the circumstances in which he is being held. They described prolonged isolation and argued that the treatment of their father amounts to psychological torture. Their concerns come amid an increasingly contested dispute over Khan’s access to medical care, his contact with the outside world and the transparency surrounding his condition. (aljazeera.com)
Those allegations cannot be considered separately from the political circumstances of Khan’s imprisonment. Since his removal from office, the Pakistani state has repeatedly faced accusations of using arrests, restrictions on political activity and other legal mechanisms against Khan’s movement and its supporters. His sons’ decision to speak internationally therefore places the conditions of one prisoner within a much broader question: how much space remains in Pakistan for an opposition movement to challenge the government without facing state retaliation?
That question is particularly significant because access to information about Khan has itself become contested. His family and political representatives have repeatedly complained about restrictions on visits and communication, while Pakistani authorities have disputed claims that he is being denied appropriate access to family, lawyers or medical treatment.
The government has said that Khan receives substantial medical care and has had extensive contact with visitors during his imprisonment. (apnews.com)
The competing accounts leave a question that cannot be resolved simply by repeating either side’s version of events. If the government’s treatment of Khan is lawful and humane, transparency should make that claim easier to establish. If restrictions on his communication and access to independent medical care are being used to isolate him politically, those restrictions become part of the wider suppression of opposition alleged by his supporters.
The brothers’ allegations therefore matter beyond their relationship with their father. They are part of an ongoing struggle over who is permitted to speak about Khan, what information the public is allowed to receive about his condition and whether the institutions responsible for his detention can be trusted to scrutinise themselves.
The question Pakistan cannot avoid
There is a danger in treating Imran Khan’s imprisonment as simply another chapter in Pakistan’s long-running political struggle. His supporters describe him as a political prisoner; the government maintains that he is a convicted politician being held through due process. But that framing can obscure the more fundamental issue: what happens when the institutions responsible for enforcing the law are themselves accused of being used to suppress political opposition?
Khan is not the only figure at the centre of that question. Since his removal from office, members and supporters of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf have faced arrests, restrictions on political activity and pressure from state institutions. The party was effectively prevented from contesting the 2024 election under its own electoral symbol, while concerns over the treatment of opposition figures and the shrinking space for political dissent have been repeatedly documented by human-rights organisations.
Against that backdrop, the repeated insistence that Khan is simply a convicted prisoner risks reducing a profoundly political situation to a legal technicality. A conviction is not evidence that a political system is functioning fairly. Courts can be used to administer justice, but legal processes can also become instruments through which political power is exercised. The differentiation is important to acknowledge precisely because the legitimacy of a democratic state depends not merely on whether it follows the appearance of legal procedure, but on whether that procedure is genuinely independent.
None of this requires Khan to be treated as infallible, nor does his political status place him beyond criminal accountability. The point is almost the opposite. If the Pakistani state believes that Khan has committed serious crimes, it should be capable of demonstrating that those cases have been pursued independently of the political objective of removing him and his movement from public life.
That burden becomes particularly important when the person being prosecuted is not an ordinary political opponent but a former prime minister whose party continues to command substantial public support. When criminal proceedings, restrictions on political participation and allegations of mistreatment in detention occur within the same political environment, they cannot responsibly be examined in isolation.
This is why the allegations raised by Khan’s sons matter. They are not merely asking whether their father is comfortable in prison. They are challenging the conditions under which a major opposition figure has been removed from political life, and asking whether the power of the state has been allowed to extend beyond legitimate punishment into political suppression.
Human rights are supposed to place limits on that power. Prison does not suspend those rights, and political controversy does not make them conditional. If Pakistan’s institutions are confident that Khan is being lawfully and humanely detained, they should be able to withstand scrutiny. If the state cannot tolerate scrutiny of how it treats its most prominent political prisoner, the problem extends far beyond one man’s imprisonment.
The question, ultimately, is not whether Imran Khan is entitled to special treatment. It is whether any government should be permitted to use the machinery of the state to silence political opposition while presenting that suppression as nothing more than the ordinary administration of justice.
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