Pakistan's top court orders jailed ex-PM Imran Khan moved to hospital

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered on Tuesday that jailed former prime minister Imran Khan be moved to hospital for medical checks on grounds of poor health, granting a demand his party had been making for months.

Justice Shahid Waheed said 73-year-old Khan, who has been in jail since 2023 on corruption charges, will be shifted in the next two days from Rawalpindi’s Adiala prison to Shifa International hospital in the capital Islamabad.

Khan and his wife and spiritual guide Bushra Bibi were both sentenced late last year to 17 years behind bars.

Uzair Bhandari, one of Khan’s lawyers, said the three-member bench on Tuesday also ordered a medical board be formed to oversee Khan’s treatment, including the former prime minister’s sister Dr Uzma Khan and his personal physician Dr Faisal Sultan.

“The court also directed that Khan’s family be allowed to meet him at the hospital and that he be permitted to speak with his sons, who live abroad,” Bhandari said.

The next hearing has been scheduled for September 16, and Khan should remain hospitalized until at least then as per the order, according to the lawyer.

This would be the longest period Khan would be physically outside jail premises since he was imprisoned in August 2023 and convicted in several corruption-related cases that he and his party insist are politically motivated.

The order followed a report that Adiala jail’s superintendent submitted to the court on Monday, detailing a cardiac board’s August 10 review of Khan, which recorded fluctuating blood pressure and anxiety linked to what it said was restricted contact with his family.

Khan received eye treatment at a hospital this year, with his family and lawyer saying at the time that he had lost most of the vision in his right eye.

Secretary general Salman Akram Raja of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) told media outside the court, in a video shared on Facebook, that Tuesday’s ruling was “a major step, a major decision, a great blessing.”

He called on the supporters of the ex-cricket captain, who remains Pakistan’s dominant political personality, to abide by his party’s agreement with the court that there “must not be any crowding or commotion.”

Khan was prime minister from 2018 to 2022 before being removed in a no-confidence vote during a political crisis over tensions between his government and the South Asian country’s powerful military establishment.

He has since faced multiple legal cases on corruption and other charges, which Khan and the PTI maintain are politically motivated.

His arrest triggered nationwide protests in May 2023, some of which turned violent and led to hundreds of arrests.

Khan was voted in by millions of Pakistanis who grew up watching him play cricket, where he excelled as an all-rounder and led the nation to a World Cup victory in 1992.

He ended decades of political dominance by dynastic parties and envisioned a national welfare state modelled on the Islamic golden age of the seventh to 14th centuries, a flourishing period in the Muslim world.

But his PTI party made little headway improving Pakistan’s finances, with galloping inflation, crippling debt and a feeble rupee undermining economic reform.