Prime Minister @andyburnham and Foreign Secretary @Ed_Miliband : how much longer will Britain remain silent?
For three years the father of my two sons, and Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, has been brutally penalised by his political opponents, in a personal vendetta by Army Chief, Asim Munir, which according to the UN, amounts to torture and which is now taking a potentially fatal toll on his physical and mental health.
He has endured 3 years of solitary confinement. For nearly ten months now his family has been denied contact with him. He has been deprived of the most basic human contact, denied access to books, lawyers and doctors.
The international human-rights standards are unequivocal. Under the UN’s Nelson Mandela Rules, solitary confinement lasting more than 15 consecutive days is prohibited and amounts to torture.
He has endured this treatment not for 15 days, but for three years.
Pakistan’s own Supreme Court has now intervened: ordering comprehensive medical treatment, access to his personal doctor, regular family visits and twice-weekly calls with his sons.
Yet those orders are being defied.
This is no longer simply a Pakistani political matter. It is a human-rights emergency.
He has deep and lifelong ties to Britain. He studied at Oxford University, captained Oxford University cricket and spent years playing county cricket in England. His relationship with this country stretches back more than half a century. His charitable activities were internationally recognised, and include building the only free cancer hospital in Pakistan as well as a university.
His sons, my two boys, Sulaiman and Kasim, are British citizens. They have been forced to watch their father’s health decline from thousands of miles away, prevented from visiting him, denied visas, publicly threatened by government officials with arrest themselves, and even denied court-mandated regular phone calls.
I have repeatedly appealed to the UK government to intervene. Purported attempts at back channelling have evidently failed. The previous Foreign Secretary @DavidLammy informed me in writing that Britain would not intervene if my sons, British citizens, are arrested when they travel to Pakistan to visit their father.
@FCDOGovUK: Britain must now speak out publicly and unequivocally. Demand that Pakistan comply with its own Supreme Court; restore Imran Khan’s medical access, his right to see his family, end his prolonged isolation and uphold his fundamental human rights.
Pakistan is a Commonwealth country. Britain has a long and proud tradition of standing against arbitrary detention, inhumane treatment and the denial of fundamental rights. Those principles mean very little if we invoke them only selectively and neglect them when inconvenient.
This an appeal to the new Burnham government to please now do the right thing.
LEAKED FOOTAGE THAT DESTROYS THE OFFICIAL OCTOBER 7 STORY
For years, Americans were given a highly sanitized account of October 7: Israel’s heavily funded military and intelligence apparatus allegedly failed for hours while Hamas killed and abducted Israelis. Now, new footage and reporting are raising tougher questions about what happened behind the scenes.
The Hannibal Directive. A policy aimed at preventing captures, even at the risk of killing Israeli captives, was once dismissed as a conspiracy. But evidence and investigations now indicate it was used on October 7.
The burned vehicles, destroyed homes, and devastating loss of life later used to justify Israel’s genocide in Gaza include damage caused by Israeli forces themselves.
A new documentary shows senior Israeli officials discussing a large-scale Hannibal operation in real time. In the first hours of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, an officer speaking with Police Chief Kobi Shabtai is heard calling for the directive’s implementation, with Gaza and Israeli captives still inside. Minister Itamar Ben Gvir later appears to order the camera shut off.
Shortly before his assassination, Charlie Kirk asked whether Israel had issued a stand-down order on October 7, questioning how it took hours to respond and warning Gaza could face ethnic cleansing.
The footage does not settle every question, but it makes clear that those questions were never out of bounds.