By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The opposition party PTI was on Thursday again blocked from meeting its founder and former prime minister Imran Khan in prison, despite a list of visitors having been cleared by the supreme court the previous day.
The rebuff came hours after five senior party leaders, themselves incarcerated in Lahore, issued an unusually pointed statement demanding that the government reconsider its hardline approach towards both Khan and the party he still directs from behind bars.
On Wednesday evening, PTI secretary-general Salman Akram Raja had submitted to the authorities a carefully drawn-up list of six individuals authorised by the apex court to see Khan at Adiala jail in Rawalpindi. The names included four sitting members of the national assembly – Shahid Khattak, Shabbir Ali Qureshi, Javed Waraich and Adil Bazai – together with Sohail Sultan and retired Major Fayyaz Ahmed.
The following afternoon, the delegation arrived at the prison gates shortly after 1.30pm. According to Shabbir Ali Qureshi, they were initially told by jail officials that the names had been forwarded for final approval and that they should wait. The group remained at the facility until 3pm – the strict cut-off time for visits during Ramadan – only to be informed that no approval had been communicated to the prison administration. “We had no option but to leave,” Qureshi said. “Unfortunately, the party leaders and family members have not been allowed to meet Imran for many months.”
The episode is the latest in a long pattern of denied access that has left Khan effectively isolated from his political organisation since his arrest in August 2023. PTI officials have repeatedly complained that the restrictions prevent the party from coordinating any coherent response to the multiple legal cases facing its founder.
In a separate development on Thursday, five of the most senior PTI figures currently held at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat prison – former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Dr Yasmin Rashid, Ejaz Chaudhry, Mian Mahmoodur Rasheed and Omar Sarfraz Cheema – released a joint statement through the party’s central media department. They argued that “national interest demands that the government should revisit its approach towards PTI and Imran Khan”.
The five called specifically for Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the party’s vice-chairman, to be granted immediate access to Khan so he could “share our political perspective”. They added that neither PTI nor its broader opposition alliance, Tehreek Tahafuz Ayeen-i-Pakistan, could “abdicate its role of a responsible opposition”.
The statement also touched on wider security and economic concerns. It warned that a prolonged regional conflict – an apparent reference to the fighting in the Middle East – risked “disastrous consequences” for Pakistan’s economic security. The leaders further declared that terrorism and the activities of the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan could not be tolerated, while urging that the people of Afghanistan be engaged rather than alienated.
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