By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Lawyers for Imran Khan, jailed former prime minister, spent about three hours with him and his wife, Bushra Bibi, inside Adiala jail on Wednesday, well beyond the hour the Islamabad High Court had ordered.
Barrister Salman Safdar and Sardar Latif Khosa were cleared to proceed from the Dahgal checkpoint to the jail in Rawalpindi. The permission followed Tuesday’s order from the Islamabad High Court (IHC), which was hearing appeals by Khan and Bibi against their convictions in the £190m Al-Qadir Trust case. The bench told the authorities to facilitate the meeting after the lawyers argued they could not begin arguments without first taking instructions from their clients.
Safdar said on X that jail officials allowed “nearly three-hour-long” access between 4pm and 7pm. Given the “extraordinary duration”, he said, the legal and medical affairs of both prisoners were covered in detail, and both gave comprehensive instructions. He will continue to lead their defence in the main appeals, while Khosa will help the court on Bibi’s pending petition over her eye complications.
Khosa, filmed by the party smiling as he spoke to reporters outside, said Khan’s blood pressure was fluctuating to a frightening degree and that his eye problem persisted. The former prime minister was nonetheless “alert and strong”, he said. He confirmed that Bibi was present, and said the party would release fuller details of what the lawyers had seen and been told on Thursday.
The length of the meeting drew a sardonic answer. Asked why it had run so long, Khosa laughed and said: “Ask those who allowed the meeting.” The court’s direction, he noted, was only that it should last no less than an hour. Accounts of the timing differed. Jail sources spoke of more than two hours in the conference room, Khosa of three to four, and the lawyers were escorted in through Gate No 5 at about 3.30pm.
Before going in, Safdar had told reporters the lawyers would seek instructions on Khan’s cases only. “We will not discuss politics,” he said. Afterwards, Khosa confirmed that the proposed 28th constitutional amendment had also come up, but declined to give details. He described the meeting as very productive.
The amendment is a live question inside Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Salman Akram Raja, a senior party figure who waited at the checkpoint, said Safdar had already carried Khan’s “clear” position on it out of their previous meeting, and that he would put it to the party’s parliamentary, core and political committees. Pakistani media reported last month that the parliamentary party had decided to support the amendment on condition that Khan was released. Senator Mashal Yousafzai has said she and 25 other senators would vote for it if he benefited.
Khan has been in prison since 5 August 2023. In January 2025, an Islamabad accountability court sentenced him to 14 years and Bibi to seven in the £190m case. Prosecutors allege the couple took land and money from a property developer in return for legalising about £190m recovered by British authorities. Khan, who is also facing trials linked to the unrest of 9 May 2023, denies wrongdoing.
Access has been the running dispute. The IHC has allowed Khan meetings with family, lawyers and associates on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but the authorities have in practice denied weekly visits since December 2025. In April, Safdar, appointed by the Supreme Court as a friend of the court, saw Khan for 60 minutes without Bibi, and described the couple as being held in near-constant solitary confinement without books, television, family or lawyers. In June, the IHC ordered a meeting with counsel within seven days. In August, the Supreme Court ordered weekly family visits, though Noreen Niazi met her brother on 18 August for about 15 minutes, her first visit in roughly nine months.
Safdar did not see both clients again until 2 November, when he was given 40 minutes. He told the court on Tuesday that he had last met Khan after seven months and Bibi after 11, and that the earlier session was too short to take full instructions. Chief Justice Sarfraz Dogar questioned why another meeting was needed so soon, and cautioned that the lawyers should not later seek to add five more names to the visitors’ list. Safdar and Khosa have repeatedly asked the court for more time on the appeals, citing their lack of access to the couple.
Elsewhere, Gohar Ali Khan and Asad Qaiser, a former speaker of the National Assembly, met Mehmood Khan Achakzai, the leader of the opposition, at his residence. The group demanded Khan’s immediate transfer to Shifa and the release of detained elected representatives and party workers, including a former chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the speaker of its provincial assembly.
The Tehreek Tahaffuz Aiyeen-e-Pakistan opposition alliance said it was gravely concerned by a Federal Constitutional Court directive restraining the Peshawar High Court from hearing cases on governor’s rule, emergency powers and the Maintenance of Public Order ordinance, and that it would file a formal petition. The alliance said the organising committee for its planned all parties conference held its first formal meeting on Wednesday.
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