Iddat case:<\/strong> Khan and his wife were accused of marrying before his wife\u2019s mandatory waiting period following her divorce from her previous husband. They were acquitted in July.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nKhan argues that all the cases brought against him are politically motivated.<\/p>\n
What did Uzma Khanum say about her visit to Khan?<\/h2>\n Following her visit with her brother on Tuesday, Khanum, who is a doctor, told reporters in Rawalpindi that her brother is confined to his cell for most of the day and is allowed outside for only a short period of time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is physically well. But he is kept inside all the time and only goes out for a short while. There is no contact with anybody. He was very angry and said that they are subjecting him to mental torture.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added that her 30-minute meeting with Khan had been closely supervised, with no mobile devices allowed.<\/p>\n
Later, alongside her sister Aleema Khanum and leaders of Khan\u2019s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI), she told the media: \u201cWhen I met him, he was very disturbed and very angry. He said that they are keeping him and Bushra Bibi in such mental torture in a small room, he said he was not allowed to meet anyone for four weeks \u2026 he said this mental torture is worse than physical torture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Have visits to Khan been officially blocked?<\/h2>\n Pakistan\u2019s authorities have not confirmed whether there is an official block on visits to Khan or what the reason for that might be.<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s meeting with his sister followed claims from Khan\u2019s family and PTI leaders that visits to him had been blocked despite court orders allowing them.<\/p>\n
In late October this year, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) directed the Adiala jail superintendent to implement an order it issued in March permitting Khan to meet with designated visitors on Tuesday and Thursday each week.<\/p>\n
Family members say these visits were never allowed, however. As a result, rumours began to circulate among Khan\u2019s supporters that he was either ill or being transferred to another jail. Some even speculated that Khan had died.<\/p>\n
What action have his family and supporters taken?<\/h2>\n Khan\u2019s sisters and supporters have long protested against Khan\u2019s imprisonment. They first staged a physical protest outside Adiala jail over the blocked access on November\u202f18.<\/p>\n
They said their protest was also in solidarity with the families of PTI members who were killed during clashes with security forces during earlier popular protests calling for Khan\u2019s release from prison on May 9, 2023; October 4, 2024; and November 26, 2024.<\/p>\n
On November 18, Khan\u2019s sisters alleged that they were \u201cviolently detained\u201d and manhandled while camping outside Adiala jail.<\/p>\n
In a second protest outside the jail on November 25, which was livestreamed on the PTI YouTube channel, Aleema said: \u201cWho knows, maybe Imran has been shifted. Why are they not letting us meet him?\u201d<\/p>\n
Then, Sohail Afridi, PTI member and chief minister of Pakistan\u2019s northwestern province, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, staged an overnight, livestreamed sit-in outside Adiala jail on November 28, claiming he had been denied access to Khan eight times.<\/p>\n
Protests calling for Khan\u2019s release also broke out in the city of Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which has been a PTI stronghold since 2013 when the party first formed a provincial government there.<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s meeting between Khan and his sister finally took place as protests continued outside Adiala jail.<\/p>\n
Then on Tuesday, local authorities enacted Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, allowing district administrations to forbid the assembly of four or more people in public areas for limited periods of time in two places \u2013 for two months in Islamabad and until Wednesday this week in Rawalpindi.<\/p>\n
What has the government said?<\/h2>\n The government has not explicitly confirmed that visits to Khan have been barred or cited any reason for blocking access.<\/p>\n
Tariq Fazal Chaudhry, a politician from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif\u2019s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) told the National Assembly on November 28 that Khan was in good health and that rumours about his health had been spread by Indian and Afghan media.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis health is perfectly fine and there is no danger to his life,\u201d Chaudhry said.<\/p>\nSupporters of the jailed former prime minister of Pakistan and leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, Imran Khan, gather during a protest over concerns about his health, near Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on December 2, 2025 [Salahuddin\/Reuters]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhy have Khan\u2019s jail visits caused a political storm in Pakistan?<\/h2>\n Some experts say that barring visits to Khan in jail is a political strategy which may backfire on Pakistan\u2019s governing party, PML-N.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe primary objective of blocking access and keeping Khan in solitary confinement is apparently meant to break him into [agreeing to] a compromise and neutralise the groundswell of antigovernment sentiment,\u201d political analyst Imtiaz Gul, who is executive director of Islamabad-based think tank, the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
Usama Khilji, a columnist based in Pakistan and director of digital rights advocacy organisation Bolo Bhi, told Al Jazeera: \u201cIn Pakistan, politicians are either in government or in jail, with the security establishment having the main say behind the scenes in who gets to govern. Imran Khan is currently a victim of politically motivated cases where due process is undermined through an increasingly managed judiciary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Khan\u2019s PTI was barred from contesting in the 2024 national elections, and several party leaders have been arrested. Party members contested as independent candidates in the elections and won more seats than any other party.<\/p>\n
But the PTI alleged that the government and military rigged the election to deny them even more seats \u2013 and independent observers also pointed to several irregularities in vote counting. The government and military have repeatedly rejected accusations that the elections were manipulated.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the most popular politician in Pakistan at the moment, his political party has faced systematic persecution; and their protests have been met with violent pushback and a virtual outlawing of any kind of demonstrations,\u201d Khilji said.<\/p>\n
\u201cRestricting access to him in jail is being done in violation of court orders and prisoners\u2019 rights in order to send a message to his party and other politicians: if you don\u2019t toe the line, there will be severe consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
For nearly a month, family members of Pakistan\u2019s jailed former prime minister, Imran Khan, 73, say they were barred from seeing him, prompting protests and causing concerns about his health. After his sister, Uzma Khanum, finally visited him at Adiala jail, the central jail in Pakistan\u2019s Rawalpindi, close to the capital, Islamabad, on Tuesday this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-explained"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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