By Staff Reporter
RAWALPINDI: The sisters of imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan were refused entry to Adiala Jail on Tuesday for what has become a routine denial of family visits, even as a court has explicitly authorized twice-weekly meetings and as new concerns mounted over the opposition leader’s medical condition.
The Islamabad High Court has ordered that Khan, the founder of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, be permitted meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays with family members, lawyers and associates. Yet those visits have been repeatedly blocked for weeks. Khan’s most recent meeting with anyone outside the prison occurred on Feb. 10, when he saw his lawyer Salman Safdar — an encounter that took place only after the Supreme Court intervened to end a prolonged period of total isolation.
One of Khan’s sisters, Aleema Khanum, spoke to reporters outside the jail gates on Tuesday, stressing the urgency of determining the cause of the 71-year-old leader’s recent health problems. Those worries intensified after Safdar reported that Khan had suffered partial vision loss in his right eye. Subsequent medical examinations confirmed that, with corrective lenses, Khan’s vision in the affected eye measured 6/9.
On Monday, Khan was taken from the jail to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad for his third anti-VEGF intravitreal injection to treat the eye condition, according to a hospital statement. His family and personal physicians have repeatedly asked that he be transferred to Shifa International Hospital in the capital and given access to his own doctors, demands that have so far gone unheeded.
Aleema Khanum also questioned why the government was insisting that Khan’s two sons, who live in Britain with their mother, former wife Jemima Goldsmith, travel to Pakistan on National Identity Cards for Overseas Pakistanis rather than on their British passports. Last week Goldsmith publicly alleged that the authorities’ preference for NICOP cards would strip the boys of British consular protection.
The sisters said they had also been barred from seeing Khan on Eidul Fitr. Khan’s other sister, Noreen Niazi, told reporters outside the jail that “there is no law in the country.” She added: “We have been coming here for so many days and there has been no damage to any public property,” dismissing government claims that PTI supporters had created law-and-order problems.
In a sharply worded statement, the PTI described the repeated denial of family visits as “a blatant violation of fundamental human and constitutional rights” and urged the judiciary to enforce its own orders “to restore its fast-eroding credibility.” The party said Khan had been held in “prolonged solitary confinement,” a practice it called a “clear breach of internationally recognised human rights standards,” including the United Nations’ Nelson Mandela Rules on the treatment of prisoners. Under those guidelines, extended solitary confinement can amount to physical and psychological torture, the statement said.
The PTI demanded that Khan immediately be granted access to family, legal counsel and party leadership; removed from solitary confinement; allowed unhindered consultations with his personal physicians; and transferred without delay to Shifa International Hospital for proper medical care. The developments underscored the deepening standoff between Khan’s supporters and the authorities more than two years after the former cricket star and prime minister was arrested, a period marked by legal battles, health concerns and persistent questions about the fairness of Pakistan’s political and judicial processes.
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