Seven former Australia cricket captains have written to the country’‘s foreign minister, Penny Wong, to raise concerns over PTI founder Imran Khan’s incarceration, terming it a matter of “basic humanity”, Cricinfo reported on Tuesday.
Imran, 73, has been imprisoned since 2023 and was sentenced late last year along with his wife to 17 years on corruption charges they both deny.
According to Cricinfo, the signatories of the letter include Allan Border, Greg Chappell, Ian Chappell, Belinda Clark, Kim Hughes, Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh.
In the letter, they said they were writing “not as diplomats or political figures, but as former captains who felt compelled to speak up”.
“The group makes clear it takes no position” on the legal or political case against Imran, describing that as a matter for Pakistan alone, the report said.
Their concern, they wrote, was with the treatment of any person in detention, calling it “a matter of basic humanity, whatever their politics”.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, a spokesperson for Wong said that Australia “regularly raises” Imran’s case in discussions with Pakistan.
“We continue to encourage authorities to ensure appropriate medical care is available to him,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying.
Last month, 22 international cricketers — including the Chappell brothers, Border, Waugh, Clark and Hughes — had penned an appeal to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, calling for Imran’s medical treatment in line with Supreme Court directives.
On August 18, the Supreme Court directed the government to move Imran to Islamabad’s Shifa International Hospital, a private facility, within two days for examination and treatment by a multidisciplinary medical board. However, it later emerged that Imran was instead taken to the government-run Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences.
In February, Indian cricket greats Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev had joined a dozen other former international captains, including the Chappell brothers, Border, Waugh, Clark and Hughes, in demanding better prison treatment for Imran, who they called “one of the finest all-rounders” of the game.
Meanwhile, the government has stated that Imran’s imprisonment is “governed by the Pakistan Prison Rules, applicable judicial directions and security arrangements appropriate to a high-profile prisoner”. It has also rejected allegations that he is being subjected to “punitive solitary confinement, cruelty or deprivation”.
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