For nearly a month, family members of Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister, Imran Khan, 73, say they were barred from seeing him, prompting protests and causing concerns about his health.
After his sister, Uzma Khanum, finally visited him at Adiala jail, the central jail in Pakistan’s Rawalpindi, close to the capital, Islamabad, on Tuesday this week, however, she said Khan’s health appeared to be good.
Still, she said, the conditions in which he is being held are poor and that he has described his imprisonment as “mental torture”.
Khan is currently serving lengthy prison sentences following convictions on corruption charges.
Khan’s wife, Bushra Bibi, is also serving a seven-year term for receiving land bribes in one of these corruption cases – the al-Qadir Trust case. Khan and Bibi have denied all of the charges against them.
Here is what we know about why visits to Khan have been blocked.
Why is Khan in jail?
Khan, who was prime minister of Pakistan from 2018 to 2022, has been in prison since his arrest in August 2023 on corruption charges. He is serving prison sentences following a slew of legal cases, including:
Al-Qadir Trust case: Khan and his wife were accused of accepting land worth 7 billion rupees ($25.12m) as a bribe from a real estate developer in exchange for illegal favours, via a trust called al-Qadir, which was established in 2018. In January 2025, Khan was sentenced by an Islamabad accountability court to 14 years in prison and Bibi to seven years, after being found guilty.
Toshakhana case: In August 2023, Khan was arrested and later found guilty of selling state gifts worth more than 140 million Pakistani rupees ($497,000), which he allegedly received during his premiership. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Anti-terrorism charges: Following Khan’s arrest in May 2023, his supporters staged often-violent protests across Pakistan. Khan now also faces anti-terrorism charges in relation to the protests. He was indicted in December 2024 in an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi and pleaded not guilty. He has not been tried yet.
Cypher case: Khan was charged with making public a classified cable – a cypher – sent to Islamabad by Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington in 2022. He was indicted alongside senior PTI leader Shah Mahmood Qureshi in October 2023. Khan and Qureshi were found guilty by a special court established under the Official Secrets Act and were convicted in January 2024. Qureshi and Khan were each sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Iddat case: Khan and his wife were accused of marrying before his wife’s mandatory waiting period following her divorce from her previous husband. They were acquitted in July.
Khan argues that all the cases brought against him are politically motivated.
What did Uzma Khanum say about her visit to Khan?
Following her visit with her brother on Tuesday, Khanum, who is a doctor, told reporters in Rawalpindi that her brother is confined to his cell for most of the day and is allowed outside for only a short period of time.
“He is physically well. But he is kept inside all the time and only goes out for a short while. There is no contact with anybody. He was very angry and said that they are subjecting him to mental torture.”
She added that her 30-minute meeting with Khan had been closely supervised, with no mobile devices allowed.
Later, alongside her sister Aleema Khanum and leaders of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI), she told the media: “When I met him, he was very disturbed and very angry. He said that they are keeping him and Bushra Bibi in such mental torture in a small room, he said he was not allowed to meet anyone for four weeks … he said this mental torture is worse than physical torture.”
Have visits to Khan been officially blocked?
Pakistan’s authorities have not confirmed whether there is an official block on visits to Khan or what the reason for that might be.
Tuesday’s meeting with his sister followed claims from Khan’s family and PTI leaders that visits to him had been blocked despite court orders allowing them.
In late October this year, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) directed the Adiala jail superintendent to implement an order it issued in March permitting Khan to meet with designated visitors on Tuesday and Thursday each week.
Family members say these visits were never allowed, however. As a result, rumours began to circulate among Khan’s supporters that he was either ill or being transferred to another jail. Some even speculated that Khan had died.
What action have his family and supporters taken?
Khan’s sisters and supporters have long protested against Khan’s imprisonment. They first staged a physical protest outside Adiala jail over the blocked access on November 18.
They said their protest was also in solidarity with the families of PTI members who were killed during clashes with security forces during earlier popular protests calling for Khan’s release from prison on May 9, 2023; October 4, 2024; and November 26, 2024.
On November 18, Khan’s sisters alleged that they were “violently detained” and manhandled while camping outside Adiala jail.
In a second protest outside the jail on November 25, which was livestreamed on the PTI YouTube channel, Aleema said: “Who knows, maybe Imran has been shifted. Why are they not letting us meet him?”
Then, Sohail Afridi, PTI member and chief minister of Pakistan’s northwestern province, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, staged an overnight, livestreamed sit-in outside Adiala jail on November 28, claiming he had been denied access to Khan eight times.
Protests calling for Khan’s release also broke out in the city of Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which has been a PTI stronghold since 2013 when the party first formed a provincial government there.
Tuesday’s meeting between Khan and his sister finally took place as protests continued outside Adiala jail.
Then on Tuesday, local authorities enacted Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, allowing district administrations to forbid the assembly of four or more people in public areas for limited periods of time in two places – for two months in Islamabad and until Wednesday this week in Rawalpindi.
What has the government said?
The government has not explicitly confirmed that visits to Khan have been barred or cited any reason for blocking access.
Tariq Fazal Chaudhry, a politician from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) told the National Assembly on November 28 that Khan was in good health and that rumours about his health had been spread by Indian and Afghan media.
“His health is perfectly fine and there is no danger to his life,” Chaudhry said.
Why have Khan’s jail visits caused a political storm in Pakistan?
Some experts say that barring visits to Khan in jail is a political strategy that may backfire on Pakistan’s governing party, PML-N.
“The primary objective of blocking access and keeping Khan in solitary confinement is apparently meant to break him into [agreeing to] a compromise and neutralise the groundswell of antigovernment sentiment,” political analyst Imtiaz Gul, who is executive director of Islamabad-based think tank, the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), told Al Jazeera.
Usama Khilji, a columnist based in Pakistan and director of digital rights advocacy organisation Bolo Bhi, told Al Jazeera: “In Pakistan, politicians are either in government or in jail, with the security establishment having the main say behind the scenes in who gets to govern. Imran Khan is currently a victim of politically motivated cases where due process is undermined through an increasingly managed judiciary.”
Khan’s PTI was barred from contesting in the 2024 national elections, and several party leaders have been arrested. Party members contested the elections as independent candidates and won more seats than any other party.
But the PTI alleged that the government and military rigged the election to deny them even more seats – and independent observers also pointed to several irregularities in vote counting. The government and military have repeatedly rejected accusations that the elections were manipulated.
“As the most popular politician in Pakistan at the moment, his political party has faced systematic persecution, and their protests have been met with violent pushback and a virtual outlawing of any kind of demonstrations,” Khilji said.
“Restricting access to him in jail is being done in violation of court orders and prisoners’ rights in order to send a message to his party and other politicians: if you don’t toe the line, there will be severe consequences.”
