A British lawmaker, Imran Ahmad Khan has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy after forcing him to drink gin at a party in 2008.
A court heard that the MP for Wakefield in West Yorkshire, dragged the teenager upstairs, pushed him onto a bed and asked him to watch porn during the attack at a house in Staffordshire.
The victim who is now 29, told a jury he was left feeling “scared, vulnerable, numb, shocked and surprised” after Khan touched his feet and legs, coming within “a hair’s breadth” of his privates, as he tried to sleep in a top bunkbed.
The gay and Muslim lawmaker however denied the sexual assault allegation, insisting that he only touched the Catholic teenager’s elbow when he “became extremely upset” after a conversation about his confused sexuality.
The MP who has been suspended by the Conservative Party, was on Monday April 11 found guilty by a jury at Southwark Crown Court.
The victim told the court that he believed he “wasn’t taken very seriously” when he first made the allegation to the Conservative Party press office days before Khan was elected as MP for Wakefield in 2019.
He then made a complaint to police days after Khan helped Boris Johnson win a large Commons majority by taking Wakefield in the so-called “red wall” that had formed Labour’s heartlands in the Midlands and northern England.
Southwark Crown Court was told how Khan forced the teen to drink gin and tonic at the get-together in January 2008. He recalled the blue Bombay Sapphire bottle, the smell of the spirit in the cut glass tumbler and the fizz of the bubbles.
“I had it and didn’t like it,” the victim said. “As it was in my mouth, he kept pushing it back.” Khan then dragged him onto a bed, whispered “disgusting” things in his ear, and requested he watch porn with him.
He then touched the boy’s groin before he “jumped out of bed as fast as he could” and ran to his parents “freaked out”. A police report was made at the time but no further action was taken as the youngster did not want to make a formal complaint.
But the victim told jurors “it all came flooding back” when he learned Khan was standing in the December 2019 general election.
The judge, Mr Justice Baker, said he will sentence Khan, who today wore a dark suit and held a walking stick, at a later date.
He will be thrown out of the House of Commons if he is handed a prison sentence of more than a year, or otherwise could be subject to a petition to oust him in the recall process.
Imran Nasir Ahmad Khan is a British politician who is currently the independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Wakefield. He was first elected as a Conservative in 2019, but had the whip withdrawn in June 2021; he was subsequently expelled from the party following his conviction for child sexual abuse in 2022.
Born and educated in Wakefield in West Yorkshire, Ahmad Khan studied at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow and King’s College London. He worked for the United Nations as special assistant for political affairs in Mogadishu and as a senior consultant for M&C Saatchi.
A supporter of Brexit, he was elected in the 2019 general election and attributed his victory to voters’ support for leaving the European Union in 2016.
In 2021, he was charged with sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy in 2008, contrary to section 3 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Ahmad Khan denied the accusation “in the strongest terms”. On 11 April 2022, following a week-long trial at Southwark Crown Court, he was found guilty of the offence. Ahmad Khan was