Do we like Imran Khan?
Our score: 5 out of 10. Real good (the tree drive) sits next to remarks that rights groups condemned, and the court cases are still being fought.
Imran Khan is the cricketer-turned-politician who founded the PTI party and became prime minister of Pakistan. He has been in Adiala jail since August 2023, and his political life is now mostly fought out through courts, petitions and his family.
The legal record is dense. In January 2025 an accountability court convicted him in the Al-Qadir Trust (£190m) case and sentenced him to 14 years. In December 2025 a special court sentenced him to 17 years in the Toshakhana-II case, over a jewellery set from the Saudi crown prince. The couple denied the allegations and called the case fabricated and politically motivated, and his party called it a closed-door jail trial and a kangaroo court.
The appeals are crawling. In late June 2026 the Islamabad High Court gave his lawyers a final two-week adjournment to start arguing the Al-Qadir appeals. The chief justice said repeated adjournment requests were putting unnecessary pressure on the court. Where you land on all this depends on whether you read the cases as ordinary accountability or as a political squeeze, and the courts haven't settled it yet.
On the harm test, we found no campaign against LGBTQ+ people in what we read, and no climate denial. The trouble is women. In 2021 he said the veil exists so there is no temptation in society, and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said the remarks lay blame on rape survivors. His adviser said the comments were misinterpreted. In 2022 rights groups also called for an apology after his Multan rally comments about Maryam Nawaz, which critics called sexist.
There was also his 2020 parliament speech on the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden. He said US forces “martyred him”, and critics, including the opposition and an analyst quoted by RFE/RL, said it undermined Pakistan's stance on terrorism. This is one speech, not a campaign, but it is part of why the record is mixed.
The good stuff is real. His nationwide Ten Billion Tree Tsunami drive was modelled on a 2014 provincial project, and RFE/RL reported it gave paid work to about 84,000 people who had lost daily-wage jobs in lockdown. It also reported corruption claims against the programme that are under investigation, and doubts about whether the trees will survive.