The sons of incarcerated PTI founder Imran Khan, Kasim and Sulaiman, have stated that their father is being kept in isolation in jail, stating that these were “clear torture tactics”.
The two made the remarks in an interview with British journalist Mehdi Hasan, a four-minute preview of which is available to the public on Zeteo’s website. The full interview is behind a pay wall.
As court-ordered prison visits stay blocked, Imran’s family and party have expressed concerns about the conditions in which he is being kept inside the prison. A United Nations’ special rapporteur has also warned that Imran is being held in conditions that could amount to inhuman or degrading treatment.
In the interview with Hasan, Kasim and Sulaiman, were asked about the government’s claims of treating Imran like a “prince” during his incarceration.
“Couldn’t be less true,” replied Kasim. He said that Imran was being held in a cell that was six by eight, “barely enough to stand”.
“The conditions are awful. He is washing himself in brown, murky water. And the food he has is — he is not the one to complain — but it’s apparently dreadful. To be a prince is far from it,” he said.
Kasim also recalled Imran’s recent meeting with his sister Uzma, saying the former premier was “pretty furious from what we have heard.”
“He was just unhappy with the … complete isolation. They’re not even allowing guards to speak to him because they want total isolation from any other person just to try and break him,” he said.
“So it’s all very clear torture tactics,” he said.During the interview, Hassan also asked the two about the last time they were able to speak to their father.
In response, Sulaiman said he last spoke to Imran “at the end of July”.
“The court in Pakistan mandates that we have weekly calls but that’s just never been followed throughout his time in prison, which is over two years now,“ he said.
“I spoke to him for about six minutes last, around September,” Kasim said.
Sulaiman said that the last time they had met Imran was in November 2022, following an assassination attempt on the PTI founder’s life. “We went there for a week I think,” he said.
In a separate clip posted on Zeteo’s Instagram account, the journalist asked the two if they were worried by Imran’s “statements” against the Chief of Defence Forces and Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir. Hasan then read out the statements posted from Imran’s X account.
“It does but that is his character,” Sulaiman said.
“Do you ever tell him to tone it down?” Hasan asked.At this, Kasim laughed and said: “No, he goes headfirst into danger historically, and we kind of accepted it at a young age that he was going to go into very dangerous situations.”
Sulaiman recalled that when he was young, he feared for his father’s life, but added that he eventually got “used to it”.
Kasim noted that his father was a “man of faith”, adding that he always maintained that God would protect him.Meanwhile, Mosharraf Zaidi, who is Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesperson for foreign media, in response to the interview, dismissed the claims made by Imran’s sons on his alleged “isolation”.
“He does not spend any time at all in a ‘cell’. As a prisoner whose security and well-being [are] a priority for the state, he has designated living quarters,” Zaidi said in comments to Zeteo.
“He has his own gym facilities, his own outdoors lawn, his own space for walking and his own space for books and reading,” he added, adding that no other prisoner enjoyed the “space and leeway” Imran had.
He claimed that Imran’s children and supporters were being “misled by disinformation”.
“He spends at least six hours a day outside the area where he sleeps. He has a cook exclusively assigned to him, and a medical officer in the prison checks every meal he eats,” Zaidi said.
Speaking about Imran’s sons visiting Pakistan, Zaidi said that his children “will be treated with the rights and privileges due to all visitors to Pakistan —as per their status under the law [….] We hope the children have a chance to meet their father — but it is almost certain that the father and his political workers will try to exploit any visit by the children as a political event.”
“In that scenario, the local authorities will take whatever measures they need to take to disperse crowds and to ensure that political activity does not create the space for lawlessness and disorder,” Zeteo quoted him as saying.
Earlier this week, in an interview with Sky News, the brothers shared they had applied for their visas and were planning a trip to Pakistan in January. During the interview, they also commented on the conditions in which the ex-premier was kept and saying that he was being held in a “death cell”.
In July, they met with United States President Donald Trump’s key aide Richard Grenell in relation to their father’s release.
‘Don’t play the sympathy card’
Separately, Minister of State for Interior Tallal Chaudhry, while speaking to the media in Faisalabad on Saturday, dismissed the allegation that the former premier was being kept in isolation, warning his family and the party not to play the “sympathy card”.
“How could he (Imran) be alone in a jail that has 1,200 inmates?” the minister asked, saying that Imran had access to gym equipment, a personal cook, among other facilities.“The whole area is operated as per his will,” he said. The minister said that Imran’s communication with his sons included phone calls “totalling over 14 hours”.
Addressing the matter of their visa, the minister recalled Imran‘s sister Aleema’s claim that the ex-premier’s children were being denied a visa, adding that he had asked her to share their tracking number.
“Till today, I have not received tracking numbers … we are very clear that anyone who wants to come to Pakistan, we will issue them visas within a few hours,” he said.
He noted that for over two years now, Imran‘s sons “had not renewed their National Identity Card for Overseas Pakistanis (NICOP), and they have not applied for visas as per our records“.
“If they have, give us the tracking number, and I assure you that they can come to Pakistan,“ the minister said.
“He is their father; they can come and stand with him and meet him,” the minister said. However, he warned them against “playing the sympathy card”.
“Do not try to gain sympathy by saying that the kids are being kept away from their father,” the minister said.
“I assure you, apply for a visa, and we will issue it immediately,” the minister reiterated.
