New Delhi, Sep 15 (IANS) : Seven former Australian captains have reached out to the foreign minister Penny Wong in a humanitarian appeal for former Pakistan captain and ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan over his imprisonment.
The letter, signed by Allan Border, Greg Chappell, Ian Chappell, Belinda Clark, Kim Hughes, Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh, mentioned that the former skippers are writing this “not as diplomats or political figures, but as former captains who felt compelled to speak up”.
As per Cricinfo, the letter also mentioned that “the group makes clear it takes no position on the legal or political case against Mr Khan”, calling it a matter of Pakistan, but they expressed concerns about any detained person’s health, calling it “a matter of basic humanity, whatever their politics”.
Recently, Imran’s sons also expressed concerns over their father’s health in an interview with Sky Sports during the England-Pakistan series as the Pakistan Cricket Board threatened to pull out of the Lord’s Test, but ultimately kept playing and lost big.
“It’s very, very clear what they’re doing, which is they’re just blatantly trying to kill him in there,” Imran’s son, Sulaiman Isa Khan, said. “They just want to keep him in there as long as possible and hopefully just silence him.”
The latest letter follows the growing support for Imran from cricket captains around the world. Earlier, Australia legend Greg Chappell and current Aussie Test and ODI skipper Pat Cummins put their weight behind Imran, asking for the treatment of the former captain in jail.
In the petition raised by Chappell and addressed to Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, which includes signatures from Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev and Dilip Vengsarkar, it has urged Pakistani authorities to grant family access and independent medical checks for Khan.
“Adding my support here to GC and the other former international captains. I hope the court-ordered medical assessment be allowed to run its course and that family visits continue. I hope Imran Khan is treated with the dignity anyone deserves,” Cummins had written on his X account.
The petition was signed by 21 former international captains, including Sir Alastair Cook, Michael Atherton, Steve Waugh, Adam Gilchrist, and Nasser Hussain, and expressed grave concern over Khan’s health, particularly reports regarding significant vision loss in his right eye, after he spent over three years in custody.
“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,” the letter stated.
