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23rd May 2022

Imran Ahmad Khan: Former Tory MP jailed for 18 months for sexual assault

Steve Hopkins

Khan was thrown out of the Conservative party after being convicted

Former Conservative MP, Imran Ahmad Khan, has been sentenced to 18 months jail for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy after plying him with gin.

Khan, who served as MP for Wakefield from 2019 until this year, was thrown out of the Conservative Party after a jury delivered its verdict at Southwark Crown Court in April.

The 48-year-old was sentenced at the same court on Monday.

The length of his sentence means he is automatically disqualified from being an MP, prompting a byelection in constituency in West Yorkshire.

The court earlier heard Khan forced the teenager to drink gin, dragged him upstairs, and asked him to watch pornography before assaulting him, at a party in Staffordshire in January 2008. The incident happened 11 years before he became an MP.

Khan has said he is appealing the conviction.

Khan was elected as Wakefield’s first Tory MP since 1932.

Khan tried and failed to ban press reporting of the case, saying his life could be at risk were the case against him made public.

He argued that as an Ahmadi Muslim, the consumption of alcohol and homosexuality is strictly prohibited within his faith, and the reporting of those matters would expose him to “a risk to his safety both here and abroad”.

Giving evidence, the victim’s parents both broke down in tears as they told how their son was left “inconsolable” and “shaking” after the incident at a house in Staffordshire, the Guardian reported.

Khan was suspended from the Conservatives in June 2021 after being charged with sexual assault, and has sat as an independent ever since.

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