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Orgo-Life the new way to the future Advertising by AdpathwayFormer cricket captains - including Sir Alastair Cook and Mike Atherton - have urged Pakistan to ensure jailed former prime minister Imran Khan receives "humane treatment and proper medical care".
The letter, shared on Khan's Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party's Facebook page, comes after the 73-year-old was temporarily moved to a hospital last week after a supreme court ruling.
The cricketer-turned-politician has been in jail since August 2023 after being convicted in a string of cases which he says were politically driven, having been ousted from power in 2022.
His lawyers say he has lost 85% of vision in his right eye while in jail, and Khan's sons have repeatedly raised concerns about his health.
Read more: Khan being held in 'death cell', his sons say
Meanwhile, Khan's English ex-wife, Jemima Goldsmith Khan, has urged Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband to act to help the former prime minister get access to his doctors.
The former cricketers wrote their letter after reports that Khan was only in hospital for a few hours before being returned to prison last week.
From February: Fears for Imran Khan's health
"He was examined by a state-appointed team rather than the board the court had directed, declared 'medically fit', and returned to Adiala Jail before that board could complete its work," they said in their letter to Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
"His family and legal team say this falls short of what the court ordered."
The government told the Associated Press it denies allegations that Khan has been subjected to "cruelty, mental torture, punitive solitary confinement and medical neglect" while in prison.
Cricketers call for 'full and independent' check-up
The cricketers have called for the government to abide by the court ruling and let the medical board - "including Mr Khan's own doctors" - complete "a full and independent assessment of his health", particularly on his right eye.
It's the second letter from ex-cricketers to the current Pakistani prime minister this year "appealing for humane treatment and proper medical care" for his predecessor, with the first in February.
Other signatories included Indian cricket stars Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar and Dilip Vengsarkar, former England stars David Gower, Mike Brearley, Mike Gatting and Nasser Hussain, as well as Australian batsmen Adam Gilchrist and Greg Chappell.
No Pakistani cricketers signed the letter.
read the letter in full
Dear Prime Minister,
Six months ago, fourteen former international cricket captains wrote to you and the Pakistani government appealing for humane treatment and proper medical care for Imran Khan. We wrote then not as politicians, but as former colleagues and rivals who share a bond forged on the cricket field - one that transcends the borders and disputes that too often divide countries.
We write again now - joined by seven further former captains - because of what has reportedly just occurred.
Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered that Imran Khan be transferred to hospital for examination by a medical board that was to include his own personal physicians and his sister, Dr Uzma Khan. The Court also reinstated weekly family visits. These were very welcome steps.
Concerningly, Mr Khan's hospital stay lasted only a few hours. He was examined by a state-appointed team rather than the board the Court had directed, declared "medically fit," and returned to Adiala Jail before that board could complete its work. His family and legal team say this falls short of what the Court ordered.
We do not presume to adjudicate Pakistan's domestic legal processes. That is not our place, and it was not the spirit in which we wrote in February. But we do ask, again, respectfully:
• That the medical board directed by the Supreme Court — including Mr Khan's own doctors — be permitted to complete a full and independent assessment of his health, particularly the reported loss of vision in his right eye.
• That the weekly family visits reinstated by the Court be honoured without interruption or administrative delay.
• That whatever the outcome of that medical assessment, the treatment recommended by it be provided without delay.
Imran Khan is 73 years old and has now spent more than three years in custody. Whatever the legal and political arguments surrounding his case, the basic decency of ensuring a court-ordered medical process is actually completed is not, in our view, a controversial request.
It is one we believe every nation that plays this game would recognise as fair.
We hope this matter can be resolved expeditiously and with the dignity Mr Imran Khan deserves.
Yours in cricket,
Michael Atherton, Alex Blackwell, Allan Border, Michael Brearley, Greg Chappell, Ian Chappell, Belinda Clark, Alastair Cook, Michael Gatting, Sunil Gavaskar, Lee Germon, Adam Gilchrist, David Gower, Kim Hughes, Nasser Hussain, Clive Lloyd, Kapil Dev, Arjuna Ranatunga, Andrew Strauss, Dilip Vengsarkar, Steve Waugh, John Wright.
'Do the right thing', ex-wife urges Burnham
It comes as Ms Goldsmith Khan urged Mr Burnham and Mr Miliband to help the former prime minister, accusing Pakistan army chief Asim Munir of a "personal vendetta" against Khan.
She also claimed her ex-husband was being "brutally penalised by his political opponents", and added: "This is no longer simply a Pakistani political matter. It is a human-rights emergency."
Ms Goldsmith Khan then said: "He has deep and lifelong ties to Britain... Britain has a long and proud tradition of standing against arbitrary detention, inhumane treatment and the denial of fundamental rights.
"Those principles mean very little if we invoke them only selectively and neglect them when inconvenient. This is an appeal to the new Burnham government to please now do the right thing."
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Court order broken, Khan's sister and doctor say
It also comes after Khan's sister Dr Uzma Khan accused the government of violating the court order by taking him to a government hospital for a medical examination instead of a private hospital, as designated by the court.
She said that during a meeting with her brother at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, a government-run hospital in Islamabad, he complained that he had been kept in solitary confinement, which she said amounted to mental torture for him.
Khan's personal physician, Dr Faisal Sultan, also said that he had been escorted to Shifa International Hospital, where he waited for the former prime minister until he was eventually told that he had already been returned to prison.
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In a statement to the Associated Press, Pakistan's information ministry denied the allegations, saying they were not supported by prison and medical records.
The PTI party has since filed a contempt petition against the Pakistani government for moving Khan to a public hospital.
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