Islamabad, Pakistan – A court-appointed lawyer has claimed that jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan has been left with simply 15 % imaginative and prescient in his proper eye after authorities allegedly ignored his complaints for 3 months, including one other layer of competition over his imprisonment.
Barrister Salman Safdar, appointed by the Supreme Court docket of Pakistan (SCP) as amicus curiae (good friend of the court docket), performed a two-hour interview with Khan on February 10 and inspected his detention facility earlier than submitting an in depth seven-page report back to the court docket on Wednesday.
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The report paints a troubling image of the 73-year-old’s deteriorating health and extended isolation, since he was imprisoned in August 2023 on dozens of fees.
It says Khan suffered fast and substantial imaginative and prescient loss over the previous three months whereas in custody below former jail superintendent Abdul Ghafoor Anjum, who was transferred in mid-January.
Regardless of repeated complaints of persistent blurred and hazy imaginative and prescient, the report states that “no motion was taken by the jail authorities to deal with these complaints”.
“He said that he subsequently suffered a sudden and full lack of imaginative and prescient in his proper eye,” Safdar wrote.
A medical report dated February 6, 2026, recognized the situation as “proper central retinal vein occlusion.” Safdar famous.
An ophthalmologist from a number one authorities hospital in Islamabad was finally consulted and confirmed the analysis, a blood clot that may trigger extreme retinal harm.
Safdar noticed that the previous premier was “visibly perturbed and deeply distressed,” with watery eyes requiring tissues all through their assembly.
The report warns that “any additional delay poses a critical threat to the petitioner’s well-being” and recommends a direct unbiased examination by professional ophthalmologists, together with Khan’s private physicians.
Following the submission of the report, the SCP moved swiftly. It ordered the formation of a medical workforce to look at Khan’s eye and directed that he be allowed telephone contact along with his sons, who each stay in the UK, and ordered each duties to be accomplished earlier than February 16.
“The difficulty of Imran’s well being is most necessary,” Chief Justice Yahya Afridi noticed, including that “intervention was mandatory.”
Well being issues mount
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the social gathering based by Khan, expressed “profound concern” in a press release on Thursday and strongly condemned the remedy meted out to him, “notably with regard to the intense deterioration of his eyesight”.
The social gathering stated it reserves the suitable to provoke authorized proceedings towards related officers over his declining well being, warning that “any hurt inflicted upon Imran Khan’s well being will likely be accounted for”.
“We demand that Imran Khan be granted immediate and unrestricted access to his private physicians and that, for specialised eye remedy, he be transferred at once to a good hospital really useful by his medical workforce. Unhindered entry to his authorized counsel and the complete restoration of household visitation rights are his elementary rights,” the assertion learn.
Khan, a well-liked former Pakistan cricket captain and World Cup winner, turned prime minister in 2018 in elections that opponents alleged have been rigged in his favour by the highly effective navy. 4 years later, he was removed via a no-confidence vote that he claimed was orchestrated by the navy, after their relationship soured, in collusion with Washington and Khan’s political rivals in Pakistan.
These allegations have been denied by each the Pakistani navy and the US.
Since his ouster, he has blamed military chief Discipline Marshal Asim Munir for his troubles and repeatedly urged supporters to stage public protests.
Following his removing from energy, Khan confronted a cascade of charges that his social gathering says have been designed to sideline Pakistan’s hottest opposition chief. After being detained for lower than two days in Could 2023, he was arrested once more in August 2023 on corruption fees.
He has been in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi since August 2023. He has remained there since, in what Safdar’s report confirms as solitary confinement for about two years and 4 months.
In June 2024, a United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Khan’s detention “had no authorized foundation and seems to have been supposed to disqualify him from operating [for] political workplace.”
Political fallout deepens
The Supreme Court docket’s resolution to nominate an unbiased observer adopted months of restricted entry to Khan. Chief Justice Afridi had burdened that Safdar needs to be given “respectful and unhindered entry” and never be saved ready outdoors the jail.
The report states that Khan has been denied entry to his lead counsel and authorized workforce for the previous 5 months. He additionally advised Safdar that his sisters and different instant relations had not been permitted to go to him. Solely after the change in jail superintendent was he allowed to fulfill his spouse – who can also be behind bars on corruption fees – as soon as every week for about half-hour each Tuesday.
Benazir Shah, a senior political analyst, stated the general public deserves transparency and his household deserves solutions.
“The federal government has mishandled Imran Khan’s well being from the very begin, first by concealing the information till it was reported by a neighborhood English newspaper, then by dismissing it as a routine matter, and finally by performing a process with out the data or presence of his household,” she stated.
“The remedy meted out to a former prime minister for thus lengthy reveals that the present authorities in Pakistan has scant regard for fundamental human rights,” Lahore-based Shah advised Al Jazeera.
