On August 1, 2025, the sons of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, Kasim and Sulaiman, stepped into the global spotlight with a high-profile interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored. Their message was one of filial devotion and grave concern, painting a picture of a father unjustly imprisoned and a Pakistani state bent on persecution. The emotional pull of two sons defending their father is undeniable and universally resonant. However, when the father is a figure as polarizing and consequential as Imran Khan, and the stage is international media, the performance warrants a closer look. Stripped of its emotional veneer, their appeal appears less a spontaneous cry for justice and more a calculated act of political theater, strategically timed and framed to achieve specific objectives far beyond family sentiment.
Crafting a Victim, Erasing a Record
For years, as Pakistan navigated the turbulent waters of political and economic crises, Khan’s sons remained conspicuously silent and distant. Their lives, rooted in the United Kingdom, continued far from the fray of Pakistani politics and their father’s escalating legal challenges. This prolonged detachment makes their sudden emergence as public advocates for his cause seem abrupt. It invites legitimate questions about the timing. Why now? Their advocacy, materializing years after their father’s legal troubles began, feels less like a natural evolution of concern and more like a carefully deployed communication strategy, activated at a moment deemed opportune for international narrative shaping.
The narrative they presented was powerful but deliberately selective. It was a story of a lone, principled leader being victimized by a corrupt system. This portrayal, however, requires omitting critical context that complicates, if not entirely contradicts, their claims. It conveniently ignores Imran Khan’s repeated and public defiance of court orders, a pattern of behavior that set him on a collision course with the judiciary long before his conviction. It erases the memory of the May 9th unrest, where supporters of his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), were implicated in attacks on national institutions and military installations, an unprecedented assault on the symbols of the state. Most importantly, their narrative disregards their father’s own record in government, where he was frequently accused of weakening the very judicial and constitutional norms they now appeal to for his protection.
From Sovereignty to Solicitation
At the heart of their appeal were grave and alarming allegations: claims of potential assassination, slow poisoning, and inhumane detention conditions. Such accusations are profoundly serious and, if true, would constitute a gross violation of human rights. Yet, they were presented without a shred of corroborating evidence. No credible international body, from Amnesty International to the United Nations, has verified these claims. There are no documented complaints filed with relevant authorities, no formal legal petitions submitted to the courts detailing this alleged mistreatment. In the absence of facts, such assertions risk being viewed as speculative fear-mongering rather than substantive grievances. Justice demands evidence, not just press statements, and to date, the claims remain firmly in the realm of rhetoric.
This leads to a central contradiction in their campaign: the selective invocation of the rule of law. The very same judicial system they now decry as compromised and politically motivated is the one that afforded their father every legal recourse. He was provided with full legal representation, his trials were conducted in an open and transparent manner, and he has been given multiple opportunities to appeal the verdicts against him through the proper channels. To champion the principles of law only when politically favorable, while simultaneously attempting to discredit the institutions that uphold it, undermines the very foundation of the rule of law his sons claim to defend. It reduces a sacred principle to a tool of political convenience.
Perhaps the most glaring contradiction is the pivot from staunch nationalism to soliciting foreign intervention. Imran Khan’s political brand was built on a platform of absolute sovereignty, encapsulated in his famous slogan, “Absolutely Not,” a defiant rejection of perceived Western influence. His career was a crusade against foreign interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs. Yet, his sons now stand on international platforms openly appealing to the very powers their father vilified. Their direct appeals to figures like Donald Trump, members of the British Parliament, and U.S. policymakers represent a complete reversal of this posture. This stark shift from populist sovereignty to open lobbying in Western capitals reflects not a continuity of principle, but a profound contradiction born of political necessity.
Rhetoric Over Remedy
Ultimately, their media engagement is a clear attempt to rebrand a series of legal convictions as a case of political persecution. It is an effort to externalize an internal legal matter, shifting the battlefield from Pakistani courtrooms, where evidence and law prevail, to the court of global public opinion, where narratives and emotions hold more sway. By doing so, they seek to exert reputational pressure on Pakistan, hoping to create a diplomatic headache that might offer their father political leverage.
This victimhood narrative stands in stark contrast to the historical conduct of Imran Khan’s own government. His tenure was marked by a confrontational style of governance, a history of aggressively targeting political opponents through state machinery, and the persistent use of populist rhetoric to bypass institutional checks and balances. Now that the consequences of that confrontational approach are unfolding through legal processes, his legacy is being recast through the emotionally charged lens of his sons’ appeal.
The messengers themselves, Kasim and Sulaiman, occupy a position of privilege without participation. As British citizens operating businesses abroad, they have never been electorally or politically active in Pakistan. Their lives are detached from the daily socio-political realities that ordinary Pakistanis face. This distance raises valid concerns about the authenticity of their advocacy and the relevance of their claims to a nation they have observed from afar. Their campaign appears to be an exercise in image rehabilitation and narrative control, an attempt to frame accountability as injustice without ever engaging with the substantive legal facts that underpin their father’s convictions.
The emotional distress of a family caught in such circumstances is understandable and deserves empathy. But the fate of a nation and the integrity of its institutions cannot be dictated by media interviews. National legal matters must be adjudicated in courtrooms, grounded in evidence and constitutional law, not in television studios. The Pakistani judiciary, for all its imperfections, has a constitutional mandate to fulfill. Its decisions, which are subject to appeal and legal oversight, must be respected as part of an institutional process. Selective outrage, especially when broadcast from abroad by those disconnected from the country’s civic life, cannot be allowed to override the very institutions that guarantee the state’s continuity and the promise of equal justice for all its citizens, including former prime ministers.
