Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned in a conversation with Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington that the safety of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan was a high priority of the United States, multiple sources familiar with the exchange told The Intercept.
The warning issued late last month by Schumer, the most powerful Democrat in Congress, to Pakistan came after intense activism by members of the Pakistani diaspora amid concerns that the Pakistani military may harm Khan, the former prime minister who was ousted from office in 2022.
“The Pakistani American diaspora has felt let down by Washington’s failure to engage power brokers in Pakistan and hold them accountable for blatant violations of human rights.”“Chuck Schumer speaking to the ambassador regarding the safety of Imran Khan is very constructive,” Mohammad Munir Khan, a Pakistani American political activist in the U.S., told The Intercept. “The Pakistani American diaspora has felt let down by Washington’s failure to engage power brokers in Pakistan and hold them accountable for blatant violations of human rights, and destruction of basic fundamentals of democracy.”
Imran Khan is currently incarcerated on corruption charges that are widely seen as politically motivated. Khan, who is regarded as the most popular politician in Pakistan, was removed from power in an April 2022 no-confidence vote orchestrated by the country’s powerful military establishment and encouraged by the U.S. Since then, Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, has faced a brutal repression that has raised international alarms and been denounced by human rights groups.
The concerns about Khan’s life that prompted Schumer’s call to the Pakistani Ambassador Masood Khan reflect a growing fear that the military may deal with Khan’s stubborn popularity by simply putting an end to his life behind bars. (Schumer’s office declined to comment for this story. The Pakistani Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
The outreach from Schumer, who represents a large, vocal Pakistani American community in New York, came as a new governing coalition in the South Asian country seeks to consolidate power despite public disaffection over a February election rife with fraud.
In addition to banning PTI, Pakistan engaged in heavy repression ahead of the February vote. A record turnout suggested PTI-aligned candidates had the upper hand. Ignoring widespread fraud, however, a coalition of parties supported by the Pakistani military successfully formed a government led by Shehbaz Sharif in the vote’s........