He’s been in prison for a year, but he’s still doing well

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan has now been in jail for almost a year – although there are times when you wouldn’t know it.

Mr Khan is still the leader of Pakistan’s political opposition; his name is still found in the papers and in the courts. His followers on social media have been relentless.

Since they have not appeared in public, the few people who are allowed to see the former cricketer regularly – his lawyers and family – have become his conduit for sending messages abroad. They are determined to push the message that his 365 days have left him bent.

“There is still controversy about him,” said Aleema Khanum, Imran Khan’s sister. “He has no needs, no wants – only reason.”

According to those who visit him, Mr Khan spends his days on his exercise bike, reading and meditating. He has an hour of walking around the yard a day. There had been disagreements about how quickly the family could provide him with new books.

“He said ‘I’m not wasting a minute of my time in prison, it’s my chance to get more information’,” Ms Khanum told the BBC.

But the truth is that Mr Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi are still stuck in jail, with no signs of their release anytime soon.

According to some, this is not surprising.

“It was not expected that Mr. Khan would do anything that would make it easier for him to get out of prison,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington.

And the military – Pakistan’s strongest player in the background – “can’t be comfortable if they decide there’s a political figure they want to shut down,” Mr Kugelman said. “It was especially the case with Khan.”

Indeed, the military has been the key to many problems in Mr Khan’s life over the past decade. Many commentators believe that it was his first close relationship with the military that helped him win power.

But on May 9 last year, that was the dolphins. Mr Khan – who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in 2022 – has been arrested, and his supporters have come out to protest.

Some of those protests turned violent, and there were attacks on military buildings – including the official residence of a senior military officer in Lahore that was looted and burned.

After that, said BBC sources Pakistani media companies had been told stop showing his picture, saying his name or playing his voice.

Mr Khan was released – but only for a few months.

He was jailed again on August 5th for failing to declare the sale of government gifts – and that was just the beginning.

As the election approaches, the charges against them increase; in early February – a few days before the vote – the 71-year-old had already received three long sentences, the last of which was 14 years.

With the election, most of Mr Khan’s PTI members are also in jail or in hiding, the party was stripped of its well-known cricket bat symbol – an important symbol in the country literacy rate of 58%..

Despite this, “we were determined and wanted to make a statement”, said Salman Akram Raja, Mr Khan’s lawyer and former candidate.

“It was tight, many could not campaign at all. Losing the symbol of the cricket bat was a blow to the body.”

All the candidates were independent, but the prospects – even within the party – were not high.

However, candidates backed by Imran Khan won more seats than anyone else, forcing his political rivals to form an alliance to stop them. Meanwhile, the PTI is still fighting for more seats in the court, complaining that the results were rigged.

Supporters see the February 8 election as a turning point, a testament to Mr Khan’s powerful message – even in prisons.

“There is a change, which was revealed on February 8,” said Aleema Khanum. “Change is coming, it’s in the air.”

Some say that in reality, the result has not changed the status quo.

“We are actually at a point where we can expect to be given precedent,” said Mr. Kugelman.

“The PTI did not form a government, its leader is still in prison and the ruling coalition is led by groups supported by the military.”

But recently, things seemed to be going well for Mr Khan and his supporters.

All three sentences handed down shortly before the end of the elections, the United Nations panel declared that his arrest was unjustified and the highest court of Pakistan said that the PTI was a legitimate party and should get “reserved seats”; seats reserved for women and non-Muslims are distributed according to the number of seats won by the party.

But none have had a visible impact: Mr Khan is still in jail with new charges against his name, and the reserved seats have not been allocated.

His wife Bushra Bibi, whose prison sentence was overturned on appeal in a case that said their marriage was illegal, is also being held on new charges.

Meanwhile, the government has made it clear that it sees Mr Khan and his group as a danger to society. It announced earlier this month that it intended to ban the PTI, despite warnings from groups such as the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

The military also shows no signs of changing its mind. On May 9 this year, a statement from its public relations department said there would be no compromise with “organizers, instigators and murderers” and they would not be allowed to “cloud the law of the land”.

And it is this relationship with the military that many analysts think Mr Khan really needs to mend in order to escape prison.

“I think we can come up with a plan that gives everyone a way out and allows the system to work,” said Khan’s lawyer, Mr Raja.

Meanwhile, out of jail, Mr Khan has been delivering his own messages. Aleema Khanum recently said that she told the army to “be neutral… to let this country run” and called it the “backbone of Pakistan”.

It has been seen as an olive branch by some commentators, although the use of the word neutral has been adopted; when in the past the army claimed to be neutral by being neutral in politics, he ridiculed this statement, saying “only an animal is neutral”.

His latest call for snap elections is a move some see as one of his terms on the military.

“I don’t think that’s quite true,” said Mr. Kugelman. “In time, Khan may give up a little. It’s one of the truths of Pakistani politics: if you want to be prime minister you need to be in good graces, or at least not in the bad graces of the military. “

For now at least, the intensity continues.