ISLAMABAD: Pakistani opposition leader and former playboy cricketer Imran Khan is to divorce for a second time, ending his marriage to a TV journalist just ten months after they wed, his wife said on Friday.
Imran Khan, 62, married 42-year-old Reham Khan, a former BBC weather host and a divorced mother of three, in January this year in a simple ceremony at his Islamabad home.
“We have decided to part ways and file for divorce,” Reham Khan said in a brief statement on her Twitter account on Friday.
File photo: Reham Khan, center, wife of Pakistan's cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, leaves a local madrassa, or seminary, in Islamabad, Pakistan.
“Yes I can confirm their divorce,” Naeem ul Haque, Imran Khan’s spokesman told AFP.
“They mutually agreed to divorce today. It’s a painful and personal matter, so I won’t be able to comment more or state any reason for it,” Haque said.
Loved by millions across the cricket-obsessed nation for winning Pakistan its only World Cup in 1992, Khan’s sporting prowess and rugged good looks also brought him international celebrity in a country lacking glamour.
He was considered his country’s most eligible man until he suddenly announced his plans to marry shortly after launching a movement to topple the government in August 2014, which he called off in December after a Taliban attack on a school that killed 150 people.
Reham Khan, host of a local TV talk show, was widely criticised after she appeared at public meetings of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) party, with opponents accusing her of seeking to boost her own profile through her husband’s fame.
She found particularly harsh reception in northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, governed by PTI.
She also sparked controversy after it emerged that she had not actually attended a college where she claimed to be a student on her website.
There had been reports Imran Khan’s family was unhappy with his choice of bride.
Imran Khan is the father of two sons from his previous marriage to British socialite Jemima Khan (nee Goldsmith).
Born in 1952 in Lahore into a comfortable family with origins in the Pashtun northwest, he was educated at Aitchison College, the Eton of Pakistan, boarding school in England, and then Oxford University.
He became one of the world’s greatest ever all-rounders - a fearsome fast bowler and dangerous batsman - whose finest hour came at the 1992 World Cup, where at the age of 39 he led an inexperienced team to the title.
Off the pitch, he had a string of socialite girlfriends and frequented exclusive nightclubs in London until he married Jemima Goldsmith, the daughter of the French-British tycoon James, in 1995.
She converted to Islam and the couple moved in with his family in Lahore.
They divorced in 2004, allegedly over the difficulties Jemima faced in Pakistan, where she was hounded for her family’s Jewish ancestry, and his obsession with politics.
