Jemima urges PM Shehbaz to Permit Imran Khan’s Sons to Meet Him

LONDON: Jemima Goldsmith, the former spouse of PTI founder and former prime minister of Pakistan Imran Khan, made a “direct appeal” to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday to allow her sons, Kasim Khan and Suleiman Khan, to meet their incarcerated father.

Jemima said in a post on X: “My sons Sulaiman and Kasim Khan applied for visas in January (again… ) to allow them to visit their father, Imran Khan, in Pakistan. The Pakistan consulate states that online visa processing normally takes 7–10 working days. It has now been 60 days.”

She said the delay in the issuance of visas was despite Defence Minister Khawaja Asif publicly “promising that they (Kasim and Suleiman) could safely travel there to see their father after four years”. She added that PM’s spokesperson for foreign media, Mosharraf Zaidi, had made a similar commitment.

“Meanwhile, they (Kasim and Suleiman) are not allowed to speak to him (Imran) on the phone, nor send him a letter. They haven’t seen him since 2022, after he was shot in an assassination attempt.

“This is an appeal directly to Pakistan’s PM Shehbaz to please allow Imran Khan’s two sons to see their father asap, particularly since, by all accounts, his health is in decline,” Jemima appealed.

Kasim and his older brother Suleiman live in London with their mother and will have to travel to Pakistan to meet Imran, who is imprisoned at Rawalpindi’s Adiala jail.