Imran Khan

Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi (born 5 October 1952) is a Pakistani former cricketer, philanthropist, and politician who served as the 19th prime minister of Pakistan from August 2018 until April 2022. As a cricketer, he captained the Pakistan national cricket team to victory in the 1992 Cricket World Cup. After retiring from cricket, he established the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Pakistan's first cancer hospital. He is the founder of the political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and was its chairman from 1996 to 2023. Born in Lahore, he graduated from Keble College, Oxford. He began his international cricket career in a 1971 Test series against England. He advocated for neutral umpiring during his captaincy. He played his last Test in January 1992 against Sri Lanka and retired after the 1992 Cricket World Cup final. In 2009, he was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. In his bachelorhood, Khan had several relationships, including with artist Emma Sergeant, his first girlfriend, and Ana-Luisa (Sita) White, daughter of industrialist Gordon White. A California court ruled him to be the father of White's daughter Tyrian Jade, a claim he denied. He married Jemima Goldsmith in 1995, with whom he had two sons; Reham Khan in 2015; and Bushra Bibi in 2018. His first two marriages ended in divorce. He supported General Musharraf's 1999 Pakistani coup d'état but fell out with him around July 2002, and was first elected to the National Assembly of Pakistan in the 2002 Pakistani general election. In the 2018 Pakistani general election, he contested five constituencies and became the first person in Pakistan's electoral history to win all five; he subsequently became prime minister in a PTI-led coalition government. During his premiership, he launched Pakistan's largest welfare programme during the COVID-19 pandemic and spoke out against Islamophobia in the Western world. In February 2022, he became the first Pakistani prime minister since 2002 to visit Moscow, arriving on the day the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. In April 2022, he became the first Pakistani prime minister to be removed from office through a no-confidence motion. He alleged US involvement in his removal, blaming Washington for opposing his foreign policy that sought closer relations with China and Russia. In October 2022, the Election Commission barred him from holding elected office for one term over the Toshakhana case. The following month, he survived an assassination attempt. In May 2023, he was arrested in the Al-Qadir Trust case, triggering the May 9 riots; although the Supreme Court later declared his arrest unlawful due to violation of judicial sanctity, he was arrested again in August. In January 2025, he was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment in the Al-Qadir Trust case, followed in December by a further 17-year sentence and a fine in the Toshakhana-II case. He has alleged that his imprisonment is politically motivated, a claim denied by the Shehbaz Sharif government and the post-2022 military establishment. He has been held in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi since his arrest in 2023.

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