Imran Khan’s second wife has fled Pakistan after receiving death threats for speaking out about her former husband, she told The Times.
Reham Khan, a dual British-Pakistani citizen, came back to Britain at Christmas to finish her autobiography, which is expected to include revelations about her marriage, after she and her assistant were threatened by individuals seeking to protect Mr Khan’s political career.
“They told us . . . that anyone who talks about Imran now is going to be blown up,” she said. She added that the messages included “a list of instructions of how they were going to use him [Mr Khan]”.
The cricket captain-turned-politician, is facing perhaps his best but last chance of becoming Pakistan’s prime minister in a general election in…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...kistan-after-threats-to-blow-her-up-tcc7lhr0d
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Rest of the article is behind a paywall.
Shame, I was really looking forward to reading it and finding out who the 'they' are!
[MENTION=133760]Abdullah719[/MENTION]
Here you go bhai, full article. (I am member)
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Imran Khan’s second wife has fled Pakistan after receiving death threats for speaking out about her former husband, she told The Times.
Reham Khan, a dual British-Pakistani citizen, came back to Britain at Christmas to finish her autobiography, which is expected to include revelations about her marriage, after she and her assistant were threatened by individuals seeking to protect Mr Khan’s political career.
“They told us . . . that anyone who talks about Imran now is going to be blown up,” she said. She added that the messages included “a list of instructions of how they were going to use him [Mr Khan]”.
The cricket captain-turned-politician, is facing perhaps his best but last chance of becoming Pakistan’s prime minister in a general election in May. Now 65, he has transformed himself from a westernised playboy to an anti-American religious nationalist and has attracted the support of both the Taliban and the country’s shadowy security services.
His prospects, however, took a sharp downturn this month when his party suffered a humiliating local election defeat and his third marriage was confirmed with the release of wedding photographs showing his new wife, Bushra Maneka, 50, in a full face veil.
Ms Khan told The Times that his relationship with Ms Maneka had started during her own marriage to him, if not before.
Ms Khan was a television journalist in Pakistan. She married Mr Khan on October 31, 2015, and was divorced by him on the same day the following year, dates she claims were picked by Ms Maneka, then Mr Khan’s “spiritual adviser”. Ms Maneka was then married but has since divorced.
“He was very keen to get it done on this date, he’s very . . . number conscious,” Ms Khan said. When Mr Khan proposed to her, after they met when she interviewed him for Pakistani television, “he sent me a message saying I want to know your parents’ names for my spiritual adviser”. Later, she said, “when we had a spat he said the spiritual adviser had mixed up the names”.
Ms Khan, who is also a social activist, attributed the threats she received to fears that Mr Khan’s star was falling after two decades in politics and many missteps. Mr Khan’s wedding photographs showing his bride in her veil have attracted ridicule from Pakistani liberals. Ms Khan called them “cringeworthy”.
His three marriages — his first was to Jemima Goldsmith, the British socialite turned campaigner and editor — and Ms Maneka’s unorthodox spiritual practices may also be hurting him among conservatives even in his own province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party controls.
“Where I come from, things like this are frowned upon,” Ms Khan said. “They do not like visits to shrines, the superstition of the threats and the amulets. It’s not permissible according to strict Islam.” Ms Khan said that during her marriage, Mr Khan was “very clear” that he saw becoming prime minister as an end in itself. “He’s a sportsman, he has to bring in the trophy,” she said.
She blames their divorce on a row over alleged sexual harassment within Mr Khan’s party, a controversy that has extended to Mr Khan himself.
Ms Khan, who plans to return to Pakistan after her book is published, no longer believes her ex-husband has a chance of becoming leader. “He’s no spring chicken. It can be tiring. From the inside, I can tell you he’s quite exhausted,” she said. “He’s lost that trust. There’s been no performance. You can’t continue to play in a cricket team unless you bring in the wickets.”
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