Deal?
He is, of course, Imran Khan, the former prime minister from 2018 to 2022, and his suffering is now becoming a global scandal. Since leaving office he has been subjected to a barrage of politically motivated cases, designed to eradicate him permanently from public life. These charges have been so blatantly without merit that they have mostly collapsed – all except one: an accusation that Imran Khan’s government steered some UK government cash towards a certain property developer, who then made a handsome donation to a university that had connections to Imran and his wife.
Are we expected to meddle in every foreign court case regarding the misappopriation of UK funds, because there's lot of them...
Even if it is true that Imran has some sort of case to answer in the so-called Al-Qadir case (and it is far from clear to me that he does), he has done nothing to deserve the kind of mental and physical torture he is getting. Above all, he deserves to have his appeal heard speedily and by an independent court. Instead he is being left literally to rot to death in jail. That is because this case was never about corruption, since he has been in fact one of the most open and transparent Pakistani politicians of modern times.
Imran Khan tried to change the way Pakistan works, and paid a price. That is essentially why he is in jail.
Thet is, undoubtedly, still a matter for Pakistan, and not for the UK.
You can object to some of the attitudes he struck, and to his teenage anti-Americanism, but nothing he said or did can conceivably justify the brutality with which the Pakistani generals are treating the former PM: banged up in foul conditions, with deteriorating health, no date for a new trial and no apparent hope of release. Why are they doing it? Simple: they are scared of him. Imran Khan is one of the greatest cricketing heroes Pakistan – or the world – has ever produced. He led his country to its first ever test victories over both India and England, and in 1992, at the age of 39, he steered Pakistan to its first World Cup victory.
Sorry, Boris, but the fact he's pretty good at sport - and boring sport at that - is no better reason to take an interest.
