Islamabad:
Jemima Goldsmith, ex-wife of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, has accused the Pakistani government of having personal vendetta against her children, a claim strongly rejected by a senior reigning party legislator on Thursday.
Imran, the founder of Pakistan Tehreek-E-Insaf (PTI), has been jailed in adial prison in Rawalpindi since August 2023. He had announced that the party would start a protest movement against the government after Ashura-E-Muharram, which was observed on Sunday.
This week, IMRAN’s sister, Aleema Khan, had said that IMRAN’s sons, Suleman Khan and Kasim Khan, would participate in the protest movement. However, the Prime Minister’s adviser to political affairs Rana Sanaullah later warned that Khan’s sons would be arrested if they took office in Pakistan.
Goldsmith posted at X that Imran had been held in solitary confinement in prison for almost two years and prevented her children from talking to their father and threatening to arrest them if they tried to visit him, similar to “Personal Vendetta”.
“My kids are not allowed to talk on the phone to their father Imran Khan,” she said. “Pakistan’s government has now said that if they go there to try to see him, they will also be arrested and put behind pillars. This does not happen in a democracy or a functioning state. This is not politics. It is a personal vendetta.”
In reactioning to the comments, Senior Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) told Senator Irfan Siddiqui a private news channel that Imran’s release from the prison was not dependent on his children or sisters but on his own behavior.
“If Imran Khan’s children want to come to Pakistan and do politics, they should come. If they are driving a movement within the ambition of the law, no one will have any objection. [But] His release is not possible by his children or sisters, rather this case depends entirely on his own behavior, ”he said.
“If Imran Khan wants to bring his children into politics and if they perform activities under the law, they have the right to do so,” he said, adding that questions such as public releases were not decided due to political pressure or family influence but by the law.
