LONDON (The Thursday Times) — Sulaiman Isa Khan, the elder son of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, has joined X, using his father’s tribal surname in his handle, @SulaimanKNiazi, and has used his first posts to raise concerns about his father’s health and access to him in prison.
“No one has seen or heard from my father since August,” he wrote on Wednesday. The post had been viewed more than 750,000 times by Thursday. The account, which carries a verified badge, was created on Tuesday and already has close to 30,000 followers.
Family campaign
His mother, Jemima Goldsmith, shared the post. His younger brother, Kasim, has also campaigned publicly for their father’s release, including in interviews with international broadcasters.
Why ‘Niazi’
Sulaiman, 29, who lives in London, goes by Sulaiman Khan but chose “Niazi” for his handle, the Pashtun tribal name in his father’s full name, Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi. The former prime minister’s political rivals have long used the name when referring to him.
Supreme Court order
In his posts, Sulaiman said the authorities had not complied with a Supreme Court order from August for his father to be assessed and treated at the private Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad and to be given regular family visits and access to his lawyers. He said his father had been “about the fittest and healthiest 70 year old man you could possibly find” when he was jailed three years ago, and that his health had since deteriorated.
Khan, the founder of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, has been in jail since August 2023. His sisters have been detained since September, and one of them, Noreen Niazi, was taken to hospital from jail on Wednesday. There was no immediate response from the government to Sulaiman’s posts.
