Idris Khattak was sentenced by Military Court for 14 years during ‘thankless Imran Khan’ regime

Human rights defender Idris Khattak was disappeared for seven months on November 13, 2019 and in December 2021 sentenced to 14 years in prison by military court when Imran Khan was in power.

Na Maloom Afraad, or unknown persons— is the euphemism for Pakistan’s secret services.

This phrase was the last post of human rights defender, and my friend Idris Khattak, a critic of now jailed premier Imran Khan, that he posted on Facebook dated November 10, 2019.

Three days later he was forcibly disappeared along with the driver of his car. His two beautiful daughters, Talia Khattak and Shumaisha Khattak, knew nothing where there father was for seven months. Khattak surfaced in military custody only to be sentenced by a military court to 14 years jail while Imran Khan was in power.

Khattak used to call Imran Khan government “chuntakhib” —spinning pun at the word “elected” and marrying it with “selected”— implying that the Pakistan military had installed Khan into power. And he was not far from the truth. The I.S.I.’s Imran Khan project took almost quarter century to come to fruition.

“Idris Khattak was forcibly disappeared at the age of 56 on 13 November 2019. For seven months, his whereabouts were unknown. He was later found in military custody, tried in a secret military court trial under the Official Secrets Act and Pakistan Army Act, and sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for ‘spying’ and other conduct “prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State,” according to the Amnesty International.

The Amnesty International said Khattak was denied the right to a fair trial before an independent civilian court, including meaningful access to his lawyer. Amnesty International called on the Pakistani authorities to guarantee Idris Khattak's right to a fair trial in a civilian court and ensure he has access to all necessary medical treatment and facilities while in custody.

It is true the first political mentor of Imran Khan was none else but I.S.I. chief Lt. Gen Hamid Gul—the Godfather of the Taliban, now deceased. Gul nurtured a serious grudge against the United States as he believed the C.I.A. had blocked his promotion as Pakistan’s army chief. Imran Khan became his favorite disciple and himself earned the title, Taliban Khan. The Gul and Khan duo had once tried to blackmail Pakistan’s most selfless social worker Abdus Sattar Edhi, according to a video former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari posted on Twitter, now X.

Maulana Edhi, who was regarded as Pakistan’s male, Muslim version of Mother Theresa, had revealed that he was asked by Imran Khan and Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul to join their party to oppose the second government of premier Benazir Bhutto. But when Edhi refused, his life was put under threat by the two and an attempt was also made to abduct him.

New York-based veteran Sindhi investigative reporter Hasan Mujtaba, in a report last year, confirmed that Edhi had leveled the charges against Gul and his political mentee Khan .

The travesty of justice in Idris Khattak case was that the military under Imran Khan premiership accused him of being an MI-6 agent— this was the charge founder of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah faced when at the behest of the British Raj he facilitated the division of India on sectarian grounds in August 1947.

“If you don’t come, we will take you away,” Edhi cited Gul and Khan threatening him, during the interview. 

Khan’s Freaky Personality

Former premier Imran Khan seems to be moving from modernity to Stone Age when it comes to wives: first wife Jemima Goldsmith, second wife Reham Khan and third wife Bushra Bibi (urf Pink Peerni).

I recall my conversation with Begum Sarwat Ahsan Ali, elder sister of Babur Ali, founder of the prestigious Lahore University of Management Sciences, in the drawing room of our family friend former National Assembly speaker Illahi Bux Soomro, who passed away last month. Soomro was childhood friend of a late uncle since the 1930s and a third friend was the assassinated premier of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. At the time I was married to Soomro’s niece while his daughter was Begum Ali’s daughter-in-law.

Begum Ali told me that she had refused to allow Diana, Princess of Wales, the use of her palatial 18-room mansion in Lahore when she visited Lahore to benefit the Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital that Imran Khan had set up in the memory of his late mother. A British newspaper had reported the matter with the headline “The Lady Who Refused Di.”

I was surprised because for many Easterners a member of the British royal family staying at their house adds to the family prestige. I asked why, and Begum Ali said she declined Imran Khan’s request for use of her mansion because, “He is thankless. He is ungrateful towards those who help him.” This was 1996.

I met Imran Khan in person at the home of another relative and TV personality Yousuf Malik Gabol a couple of years earlier. Yousuf Malik, who died February last year, was a founding member of Imran Khan’s P.T.I. and parted ways with him because of the same reason: Imran Khan is thankless.

Yousuf Malik Gabol being interviewed by journalist Mujahid Barelvi. Former president Dr. Arif Alvi looks on.

In a way it is true that Khan is like the dog that bites his master’s hand. The I.S.I.’s “Imran Khan Project” took more than a quarter century to come to fruition. He was finally successful in reaching the prime minister house with the help of former military chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa. The 2018 election was massively manipulated by the men in uniform to bring Khan to power.

However, Imran Khan soon picked up a battle with Gen. Bajwa because like many jihadists, he romanticizes about the idea of waging war against the United States.

I know this jihad idea is quite well ingrained in the minds of Pakistani military personnel. I came to know this by chance. I was invited by former Balochistan chief minister Jan Jamali for lunch at the Quetta army cantonment when he was information minister in the government of Balochistan. I was at the time special political correspondent of The News International.

At the lunch, an army major said the only way for Pakistan’s progress was that it should declare war. I thought he was talking about war with neighboring India against who Pakistan military fought quite some wars but got defeated. Just to reconfirm I asked war with India, he replied, “No, the United States.” Being the big mouth that I still am I shared the joke I had heard from a Palestinian journalist when I was working as a copy editor in the newsroom of the Khaleej Times in Dubai in 1990.

The story goes that seven wise old Yemen men, who were in angst about poverty in their country, were having a brainstorming session on how to change the situation. One man said how about declaring war against America. The Americans will beat us like they beat Japan and Germany and then help us like they built those countries to become the world’s richest economies. The idea was liked by some of the old Yemeni men but one old man had a question:what will happen of us if Yemen wins the war against the U.S.

The major at the army mess did not like what I told him.

It was this mindset of jihad against America that propelled Imran Khan to defy his main mentor Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa and go to Moscow on the day Vladimir Putin launched an attack against Ukraine.

Joe Biden knew Khan penchant for jihad and refused to answer his call when as the prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, called him after he was elected in the 2020 elections. However, President-elect Donald Trump does not have foreign policy as his main forte and for this reason Imran Khan supporters were trying to flatter Trump at a Washington DC rally Sunday by putting a picture of Trump and Khan with “Partners in Peace” written on top of it.

A couple of hundreds of mostly Islamist Pakistanis were present at the DC rally and supporters of jailed former I.S.I. chief Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed were also present.

Imran Khan showed that he was a Muslim misogynist when he accused women who become victims of rape in Pakistan for dressing immodestly. According to The Guardian, Khan was questioned by the Axios journalist Jonathan Swan about the ongoing “rape epidemic” in Pakistan and responded by saying: “If a woman is wearing very few clothes it will have an impact on the man unless they are robots. It’s common sense.”

Imran Khan’s misogynist views were condemned by two his ex-wives Jemima Goldsmith and Reham Khan, with the second quoted as saying, “The less he speaks the better it will be for all,” The Independent reported.

There was an even bigger streak of lunacy attached to one of his actions. Three years aago he arrived in Madina in Saudi Arabia, with his fundamentalist wife Bushra Bibi and members of his entourage. What freaked the Saudis out was the Pakistanis were barefooted “out of respect for the Holy Land.” This act of lunacy is said to have annoyed his Saudi hosts and finally led to his undoing, his burqa-clad wife recently revealed.

Though both Khan and Bushra Bibi try to convince common Pakistanis they are pious Muslims, the reality was the two were having romance when she was already married— Islam prohibits out of wedlock relationship.

Some of Imran Khan closest friends say the present wife Bushra Bibi, who is also called Pink Peerni is a disaster.

“Corrupt and greedy Bushra Bibi and her family and equally corrupt friends like ….. Gen Faiz were a constant source of embarrassment….” Imran Khan’s bosom buddy and famous singer, New York-based Dr. Salman Ahmad tweeted on X.

Idris Khattak, center, with Moin Qureshi and Nasir Arain. All three were my Karachi university buddies.

I am pretty sure Imran Khan knows and remembers me. The reason is as a journalist I was deceived by a lawyer named Salim Salam Ansari, who was a friend of my Kashmiri friends from Karachi University, Shaukat Kashmiri and Mumtaz Kashmiri, both of who live in exile. “He is known as an agency tout in legal fraternity,” a senior lawyer in Karachi told me Monday about Ansari.

The crooked Ansari misled me into believing his story that he had dated Jemima Goldsmith in London. After the story got published with my byline April 1996, Ansari denied his interview. I felt so embarrassed over my blunder that I quit my journalism job at The News International, even though the publisher Mir Shakilur Rahman was very respectful of me.