"Dad will never budge, he'd rather die in prison," Sulaiman Khan and Qasim Khan told The Times in a rare interview about their father, former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has been imprisoned for over 18 months on charges his supporters call politically motivated.
The sons' stark assessment—that their 73-year-old father would choose death over compromise with Pakistan's military establishment—underscores the deepening political crisis in a nuclear-armed nation of 240 million people now simultaneously attempting to mediate peace between Iran and the United States while its own democratic institutions crumble.
The Human Cost
"We want proper treatment for our father," the sons said, raising concerns about Khan's health conditions in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi. Khan, a former cricket captain who led Pakistan to World Cup victory in 1992 before entering politics, has been held since his removal from office in 2022 following a parliamentary no-confidence vote.
He faces charges ranging from corruption to revealing state secrets to inciting violence during the May 2023 protests that followed his arrest. His Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, once the country's most popular political force, has been systematically dismantled—its leadership jailed, its election symbol removed, its lawmakers forced to defect.
For Khan's sons, raised between London and Islamabad, the imprisonment represents not just a political battle but a family trauma. Their father, who once commanded stadiums and governed a nation, now depends on family visits for news of the outside world. "He'd rather die in prison," they told The Times—not as hyperbole, but as observed fact.
