Back within the days when he was a world-famous cricketer and playboy additionalordinaire, Imran Khan’s Knightsbridge condo, which had a mirrored eating room and a painted tiger mural, was described by one customer as having ‘a bedroom of great expectations’.
Khan’s success as a charismatic, aggressive quick bowler was matched solely by his status as a smoulderingly good-looking lothario. Throughout the Nineteen Eighties and early Nineties, he had London society — and a few of its most stunning ladies — mendacity at his toes.
This week, as he languished in an overcrowded Punjabi jail, Pakistan’s former prime minister may have been forgiven for wanting again wistfully on these glamorous, hedonistic occasions.
Imran Khan at The Oval in south London in 1987, just a few years earlier than his political profession started
After going through the most recent in a swathe of prison expenses laid towards him in his house nation, Khan has been advised he’ll spend, on the very least, the following 14 years behind bars for crimes together with corruption, inciting violence and leaking state secrets and techniques — all of which he vehemently denies.
Barred from standing in Pakistan’s normal election subsequent week, the 71-year-old’s supporters say that the 170 ongoing authorized circumstances that he’s nonetheless battling are a politically motivated try and preserve his title off the poll sheet and isolate him from backers.
Undeterred by their chief languishing in jail, his embattled social gathering has adopted unconventional strategies to mobilise his backers, together with utilizing AI voice era to ship his speeches from notes handed to his legal professionals.
More, later, of the political machinations which have seen Khan confined, with only a static bike for train, in a heavily-guarded cell in Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, just a few miles south of capital Islamabad.
Police escort Khan into the excessive court docket in Islamabad, Pakistan, for his trial in May final yr
For because the Mail has realized after talking to his pals and associates this week, the scuppering of Khan’s political desires may very well be the least of his worries.
In a rustic the place political assassinations are rife and the demise penalty nonetheless in place for among the crimes with which he has been charged, the long run for the devoutly spiritual politician, who survived an murderer’s bullets simply over a yr in the past, is now perilous.
‘We fear he could be assassinated in prison,’ considered one of his supporters, Ghulam Bilal Javed, advised the Mail this week. ‘He has been attacked twice in the past and this time too we can expect anything from our opponents. We are very concerned about Imran Khan’s life.’
Also watching this week’s sinister developments are Khan’s two sons, Sulaiman and Kasim, from his decade-long marriage to billionaire heiress, journalist and screenwriter Jemima Goldsmith. This week, as her former husband was introduced earlier than a behind-closed-doors trial held in jail to be handed first, a ten-year jail sentence, and a day later, a 14-year sentence to run concurrently, his glamorous ex-wife was quietly celebrating her fiftieth birthday.
Jemima Goldsmith in 2012 with the 2 sons she had with Khan, Sulaiman and Kasim
Although divorced for 20 years, there isn’t any ailing will between them and pals of the household inform me that Khan is uppermost of their minds.
A jail supply advised the Mail this week that Khan, who has been behind bars since his arrest in August final yr by anti-corruption officers, has been allowed to talk simply twice on the cellphone to 27-year-old Sulaiman and 24-year-old Kasim in London.
‘They used to speak to him regularly but now they are allowed only intermittent calls,’ a pal of Khan’s additionally advised me this week.
‘They love him and they worry about him but they have learnt to live with having a father who’s on a mission which suggests they don’t get to have a father in the way in which that different younger males do. I feel they settle for that and are at peace with it.’
The final time Sulaiman and Kasim noticed their father was in November 2022 after they flew to his hospital bedside after he was shot twice in the best leg whereas giving a speech to supporters in Wazirabad, Punjab, by an murderer wielding an AK-47.
Despite his seemingly hopeless scenario, Khan’s pal advised the Mail this week that he’s in ‘typically stoical’ temper. ‘He’s capable of finding peace in his books and prayer and reflection and studying and train,’ mentioned the pal.
Prison insiders additionally say that he’s receiving VIP therapy regardless of being locked up in Adiala jail’s high-security zone. Two cells have been knocked into one massive white-washed room with a veranda measuring 80 ft by 60 ft wherein Khan lives alone, monitored by 24-hour CCTV cameras. For safety causes, the cells surrounding his are being stored empty.
The couple at Richmond Registry Office in west London after their civil wedding ceremony in June 1995
He has a chair, a desk and a mattress with 4 pillows, in addition to a fan and an electrical heater. For leisure there’s a 21 in tv on which he can watch solely the state TV channel, PTV. He has been supplied with 4 copies of the Koran and 25 historical past books of his personal alternative, and given entry to the English-language newspaper, Dawn.
Each morning, he wakes early for pre-dawn prayers and Koran studying earlier than exercising and consuming a breakfast of bread, egg, yoghurt and honey dropped at him by a prisoner servant, who cooks and cleans for him and washes his garments for cost.
Comfortable, little doubt, by Pakistan jail requirements however all of this can be a far cry from Khan’s former lifetime of luxurious.
He first got here to the UK in 1971 — the identical yr he made his debut for Pakistan’s nationwide cricket workforce. He was privately educated within the sixth-form on the Royal Grammar School, Worcester, and went on to Keble College, Oxford, the place he learn geography earlier than switching to politics, philosophy and economics.
By then, he was grabbing the cricketing world’s consideration as an aggressive quick bowler. And whereas his cricket profession flourished, so too did his Casanova status.
By the late Seventies, he was an everyday at fabled London personal members’ golf equipment Tramp and Annabel’s, institutions adored by royalty and aristocracy alike. Aside from a gradual stream of ‘mystery blondes’ who made him fodder for gossip columnists, his dates and girlfriends included the likes of Goldie Hawn and Stephanie Beacham in addition to girl-about-town Susannah Constantine, Lady Liza Campbell and society artist Emma Sergeant.
‘No man looks as devastating as Imran,’ the mannequin Marie Helvin as soon as mentioned. ‘Everyone falls for him. He has a scent that is very attractive to women.’
Khan and his spouse Bushra Bibi on the High Court, in Lahore on July 17 final yr
Teetotal and non-smoking, Khan as soon as mentioned that assembly ladies was amongst ‘the very decadent pleasures in life’ which he loved.
His fairy-tale marriage to Jemima, the daughter of billionaire financier Sir Jimmy Goldsmith, introduced an finish to his bachelor years and was splashed all around the pages of Hello! journal in 1995.
Jemima, who was 21 when she wed then 43-year-old Khan, transformed to Islam and the couple moved to stay with Khan’s rich household in Lahore. He launched his political social gathering the next yr when he and Jemima additionally made headlines because of a high-profile go to from Princess Diana. Khan later admitted that politics and household failed to combine.
While his personal life was ‘raked over’ within the media by his political opponents, Jemima additionally paid a heavy value for her husband’s political ambitions. He mentioned critics in Pakistan would assault her to get at him, utilizing her Jewish ancestry to accuse her of being a part of a Zionist plot to take over the nation.
The couple divorced, amicably, in 2004 with Jemima returning to the UK with their sons who visited their father throughout the college holidays.
In an article she wrote for the Independent in December final yr, Jemima wrote that ‘my Jewishness was used as a baton to beat my politician ex-husband Imran Khan, in Pakistan, where Zionist conspiracy theories about me were fabricated. This led to decades of death threats and threats of rape and violence towards me and my children which continue to this day.’
The household pal who spoke to the Mail this week mentioned ‘the utterly ridiculous suggestion of a Zionist conspiracy makes it difficult for family members in the UK to be vocal in their support of Imran’.
The gulf between Khan’s life and his sons’ lives within the West couldn’t be wider. While Khan has devoted his life to rooting out the corruption rife in Pakistani politics, Sulaiman and Kasim, who each studied at Bristol University, have been quietly forging their careers within the UK.
Sulaiman is an account govt for a Scottish firm promoting greater than 1,000 sorts of whisky by way of its boutique lodge in Banffshire and an upmarket bar in London. Kasim, in the meantime, launched a advertising and marketing app in November final yr geared toward connecting influencers with manufacturers.
Both sons are near their mom, who runs her personal London-based movie firm, Instinct Productions and wrote and produced her first main movie, What’s Love Got To Do With It?, a cross-cultural romcom that got here out in 2022 about love and marriage starring Lily James and Emma Thompson. All this serves as a stark reminder of the life Khan left behind when he launched his Tehreek-e-Insaf or ‘Movement for Justice’ social gathering again in 1996 and, in response to some, the life he may have once more if he gave up politics.
‘He could have a fabulous lifestyle here in the West,’ his pal advised me this week. ‘I still believe he could. I’ve heard from senior, well-related Pakistanis that if he had been to do a deal and agree to depart politics and Pakistan, he’d be out the following day.
‘He could be back in London having dinner in one of Mayfair’s personal members’ golf equipment in a few days. His opponents simply need him to depart, however he gained’t as a result of he believes that may taint and corrupt his complete mission.’
Khan stays a robust and but divisive determine in Pakistan. For among the nation’s 240 million residents he’s an anti-institution hero. To his opponents, he’s power-crazy and corrupt.
He was elected prime minister in 2018 with a picture as a pious reformer devoted to combating corruption. But, amid experiences that his relationship had soured with the omnipotent army, which has dominated Pakistan because it was partitioned from India in 1947, he was ousted by a vote of no confidence, in 2022.
Khan, Jemima and Sulaiman, two, in London in June 1999. They divorced 5 years later
Khan, nevertheless, refused to go quietly. Buoyed up by 1000’s of his supporters protesting in cities throughout Pakistan, he claimed that the U.S. authorities was behind his removing from energy, allegedly as a result of they had been sad about his go to to Vladimir Putin in Moscow the earlier month to debate plans for a gasoline pipeline.
This declare, which the U.S. denies, was behind one of the severe expenses introduced towards Khan — the ‘cypher case’ wherein he was accused of leaking state secrets and techniques within the type of a delicate diplomatic cable despatched to Islamabad from Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington.
It was for this alleged crime that Khan was convicted final Tuesday after a closed trial, held in jail, which his legal professionals say they weren’t allowed to attend. Khan has referred to as the trial a ‘sham’ and has mentioned he’ll attraction.
His lawyer, Shoaib Shaheen, advised the Mail: ‘There was a chance of the death penalty in the cypher case but that is done now. The conviction is unconstitutional and illegal. The government wants to demoralise his voters and take him out of the election process.’
The former cricket hero in 1983 along with his younger sons, Kasim, left and Sulaiman
A day after being handed the ten-year sentence, a second closed trial noticed Khan — and third spouse, divorced religion healer Bushra Bibi — sentenced to 14 years after being accused of making ‘false statements and incorrect declarations’ about items given to him whereas he was prime minister. Bibi is beneath home arrest in Islamabad.
Those near Khan are undoubtedly paying a heavy value for his political ambitions.
His sons, in response to the household pal, ‘have learnt to live with their lot. They know the cross they bear’.
It is Khan himself who has certainly paid the heaviest value of all. Until now, he has remained defiant within the face of adversity, urging his supporters to end up subsequent week for the final election even when they can not vote for him.
But, caught behind bars for the foreseeable future, disqualified from operating for political workplace and with but extra expenses coming his approach, his imaginative and prescient of a ‘new Pakistan’ the place wealth is shared, seems to be mendacity in tatters.