Jury holds British MP of Pakistani descent guilty of sexually assaulting minor boy

LONDON: A British MP of Pakistani descent has been discovered responsible of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy following trial by jury.
Imran Ahmad Khan, 48, who’s half-Pakistani and half-English, has denied assaulting {the teenager} after a celebration on the sufferer’s household residence in Staffordshire in January 2008. It took the jury at Southwark Crown Court docket on Monday simply 5 hours to convict him. He’s considered the primary sitting British MP convicted of kid intercourse offences.
A spokesperson for the Conservative social gathering instructed TOI following the decision: “Imran Khan has been expelled from the Conservative social gathering with quick impact”. Khan was suspended from the Conservative social gathering when he was charged with the offence and had been sitting as an impartial MP ever since. His legal professionals mentioned he deliberate to enchantment the decision.
The court docket heard that Khan had sexually assaulted {the teenager}, who’s Catholic, following a celebration on the boy’s household residence in Staffordshire in January 2008. Khan, aged 34 on the time, attended the social gathering as a visitor. He stayed the evening within the household residence and shared a bed room with the sufferer. {The teenager} reported that Khan plied him with gin and tonic and sexually assaulted him in his mattress. The sufferer, now 29, reported the crime to police in December 2019 after Khan was elected as MP. The court docket additionally heard Khan had carried out a intercourse act on a person in Pakistan in 2010 after a celebration, the place that they had been consuming whisky and smoking hashish.
Khan is because of be sentenced at Southwark Crown Court docket at a later date. A sentence of over 12 months in jail will robotically disqualify him from being an MP while any lesser sentence of imprisonment will set off a recall petition whereby if 10% of eligible registered voters signal a recall petition calling for him to be eliminated, the seat turns into vacant and a by-election is required. A recalled MP might stand as a candidate. No recall could be initiated till any appeals course of is accomplished.
A spokesperson for Staffordshire Police mentioned: “We wish to commend the sufferer for reporting the offence dedicated in opposition to him – he has proven actual bravery and braveness in doing so. This case has had a huge effect on the sufferer and his household for various years.”
Khan is the primary British MP from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Group. He tried to have the case heard anonymously on the grounds that as an Ahmadi Muslim, the consumption of alcohol and homosexuality are strictly prohibited, and reporting such issues would expose him to a threat to his security within the UK and abroad. Nonetheless, his software was rejected by the court docket. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Group is persecuted in Pakistan.
Born in Wakefield, his English mom was a nurse and midwife within the metropolis’s hospital and his late Pakistani father Dr Saeed Khan was the world’s first marketing consultant dermatologist.
Khan attended an area non-public college after which studied Russian at Pushkin Institute in Moscow and skim battle research at King’s School London.
He was voted in because the MP for Wakefield, a working class space in Yorkshire, in December 2019, turning into the primary Tory MP within the seat since 1932, making it one of many “crimson wall” seats the Conservatives gained in that election. After being elected, he denied media reviews, which acknowledged he was the primary overtly homosexual Muslim British MP.
Earlier than turning into an MP, Khan had labored on the frontline as a counter-terrorism knowledgeable within the combat in opposition to the specter of ISIS and different terror organisations in war-torn international locations around the globe, together with Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria.