Imran Khan applies to be Oxford University chancellor from prison

Imran Khan, Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister, has applied to become the University of Oxford’s next chancellor, an aide has claimed.
Syed Zulfi Bukhari, an adviser to Khan, said he had submitted an application on Sunday night to stand in an election to replace Lord Patten of Barnes. Khan has been imprisoned for more than a year on charges he claims are politically motivated.
Khan, 71, who was the captain of the Pakistan national cricket team throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, is already an honorary fellow of Oxford’s Keble College, where he studied philosophy, politics and economics, matriculating in 1972. He later captained the university’s cricket team.
“It would be an honour not only for Imran Khan and Pakistan but all of Asia. His cases are frivolous and we’re hoping he will be able to contest as a free man. If not we will see a historic campaign, [the] first of [its] kind”, Bukhari said.
The chancellor role is mainly ceremonial and selection is carried out via an election. For centuries graduates and academics who are eligible to vote had to be present in Oxford and wearing formal dress to take part. New rules, however, allow votes to be placed online.
Other notable figures to apply to replace Lord Patten, a former Conservative minister and the last British governor of Hong Kong, include the former Conservative leader Lord Hague of Richmond and the lawyer Lady Elish Angiolini, a pro-vice-chancellor of the university, who ran the inquiry into police failings over the murder of Sarah Everard.
Candidates cannot be current enrolled students, employees of the university or candidates for political office.
Khan captained the Pakistan men’s cricket team when they won the Cricket World Cup in 1992 and became a national hero at the time.
He was jailed on August 5 last year for failing to correctly declare money earned from selling gifts received while in office. He is held in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, which neighbours the capital, Islamabad.
• Imran Khan: ‘I’m locked in a death cell for terrorists’
The cases against Khan, who was prime minister from 2018 to 2022, escalated and he was given three prison sentences, but most of them have now been quashed by the courts.
On Monday an accountability court sentenced Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, to jail on a 15-day judicial remand in a new case regarding state gifts. A United Nations panel declared Khan’s detention was arbitrary but he remains in jail.