Samantha Jones-
Serving Member of Parliament Imran Khan has been expelled from the Conservative Party after being convicted of sexually assaulting a boy. The Wakefield MP is yet to learn his fate after being found guilty of the offence at Southwark Crown Court.
Jurors at Southwark Crown Court heard that Imran Ahmad Khan groped the boy in a bunk bed at a house party in Staffordshire after forcing him to drink gin and tonic and asking him to watch pornography.
The victim reported the assault to the police at the time, but decided not to pursue it further until he learned Khan was standing for parliament.
The victim, now 29, told the court he wasn’t “taken very seriously” when he made the allegation to the Conservative Party press office days before the 2019 general election. He told a jury he was left feeling “scared, vulnerable, numb, shocked and surprised” after Khan touched him.
Khan denied the charge, claiming he only touched the boy’s elbow when he “became extremely upset” after a conversation about his confused sexuality.
A Conservative Party spokesman this evening confirmed the 48-year-old had been expelled “with immediate effect”. Jurors decided Khan was guilty after hearing how he forced the teenager to drink gin and tonic, dragged him upstairs, pushed him on to a bed and asked him to watch pornography before the attack at a house in Staffordshire in January 2008.
The victim made a complaint to police days after Khan helped Prime Minister 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. Khan had been suspended by the Tories pending the result of the trial, with the decision to expel him taken after confirmation of the jury’s ruling.
His legal team has vowed to appeal against the conviction, a move that could delay a potential by-election. Khan, who was 34 at the time of the offence, 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.
The judge, Mr Justice Baker, said he will sentence Khan at a date to be fixed. The victim, 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 went to sleep in a top bunkbed.
He ran to his parents and a police report was made at the time, but no further action was taken because the youngster did not want to make a formal complaint. But he told jurors “it all came flooding back” when he learned Khan was standing in the December 2019 general election.
The Tory hopeful was literally parachuted into the constituency in a skydiving stunt after he was selected to replace Antony Calvert weeks before the election. Days ahead of the poll, the victim said he contacted the Conservative Party press office, to tell them what Khan had done to him, but added: “I wasn’t taken very seriously.”