For a man who was still his country’s prime minister four years ago, life today in Pakistan could hardly be more desolate for Imran Khan. Languishing in Rawalpindi’s Adiala prison, the 73-year-old cricket icon has, according to information shared with the United Nations, been spending 22 hours a day in solitary confinement, with his cell under constant surveillance. Even minimal family visits are understood to be denied, with his country’s military apparently hell-bent on snuffing out his last vestige of resistance. “It’s psychological torture that they’re employing to try to break him,” says his son, Kasim. “But he’s very, very tough to break.”
Kasim and Sulaiman, Khan’s two boys with his first wife Jemima Goldsmith, are at their wits’ end in pursuing a solution to a nightmare that has been deepening over 2½ years. This week marks the nadir, with an inflammatory social media post dictated by Khan about Asim Munir, the army’s chief of staff – a man whom he accused of “moral degradation” – offering a pretext to strip him of all rights and dignity. Worse, his legal jeopardy is acute, with his 14-year sentence for corruption, based on what he claims is a politically motivated thirst for vengeance, complicated by the constant addition of fresh charges. The family fears that there is no way out.
“There are over 200 cases,” Kasim explains. “Each time one case is overturned, two or three are put on him. It’s just a way to delay any resolution.” The prison conditions, Sulaiman indicates, are almost beyond endurance. “He’s in a very small cell, which has been described as a ‘death cell’, because this is where they’ve held people who are on death row. Sometimes the electricity is cut off. Sometimes he won’t be allowed reading materials.”
“The water that he showers in is not just dirty, but discoloured,” Kasim says. “A dozen prisoners in that jail have died of hepatitis, and all of them were supporters of PTI, his political party.” The prison’s superintendent insists that anybody carrying an infectious disease is isolated from other inmates. But a report by Alice Jill Edwards, the UN’s special rapporteur, paints the bleakest picture, with Khan’s cell described as small, poorly ventilated, lacking in natural light, with extreme temperatures and insect infestations leading to nausea and weight loss.
How ever did we reach this point? We are talking, after all, about an emblematic figure in Pakistan’s history, one of the most sophisticated all-rounders that cricket has produced and the architect of his nation’s solitary 50-over World Cup triumph in 1992. In that tournament, he famously exhorted his players to “fight like cornered tigers”, even wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the animal to emphasise his defiance.
