Hassan Niazi: Biography, Family, Legal Career, Military Court Sentence and Status in 2026

Who is Hassan Niazi?

Here is the main point. Hassan Niazi has never been a minister or a member of any assembly. He matters for two reasons.

The first is his family. He is the son of one of Imran Khan’s sisters. That made him the best-known member of the younger generation of the Khan family in politics.

The second is his case. He is one of the most prominent civilians to be tried and sentenced by a military court after the events of 9 May 2023. His name comes up in almost every argument about whether soldiers should be judging civilians.

So his story is partly about one man. It is also about a legal question that reached the Supreme Court and drew comment from foreign governments.

Hassan Niazi’s case sits at the meeting point of three things Pakistanis argue about most: political families, street protest and the reach of military justice.

Family: the Niazis of Mianwali

To understand who he is, start with the family tree.

His father’s side of the story is interesting in itself. Hafeezullah Niazi is Imran Khan’s cousin as well as his brother-in-law. He was one of the founding members of the PTI and contested an election for it in Mianwali in 2002. He later fell out with his brother-in-law and became one of his sharpest critics on television.

So Hassan Niazi grew up in a house where the father and the uncle stood on opposite sides. He chose the uncle’s party. And when he was arrested, it was the father, the critic of the PTI, who went from court to court asking where his son was.

His date of birth is not confirmed by any reliable source, and we will not guess his age.

Education and profession

He is a lawyer and is widely described in the press as Barrister Hassaan Niazi. A barrister is a lawyer who has qualified through one of the legal societies in England.

We could not find a reliable source for where he studied or when he was called to the bar. So this profile leaves it there.

He practised law in Lahore, and it was a dispute involving the city’s lawyers that led to his first big controversy.

Student politics and the PTI

According to a party statement issued in 2022, he had by then been with the PTI for 17 years. That would put the start of his involvement around 2005, when the party held a single seat in Parliament.

He came up through the Insaf Students Federation, the party’s student wing. The same statement says he was its president in Punjab from 2008 to 2010.

Student wings are where Pakistani parties find their street organisers. Members put up posters, fill rallies and run social media. For the PTI, which built its early support among young people, the student federation mattered more than it did for older parties.

The hospital attack case, December 2019

His name first reached the front pages in December 2019, when his uncle was Prime Minister.

A quarrel had been running for weeks between lawyers and doctors at the Punjab Institute of Cardiology, a major heart hospital in Lahore. On 11 December 2019 a crowd of more than 200 lawyers marched to the hospital. They broke into wards, smashed equipment and damaged dozens of vehicles. A police van was set on fire. Patients in critical care were left without treatment, and several were reported to have died.

The scenes shocked the country. Then a video spread showing Hassan Niazi in the crowd.

What followed is on the record.

• The police said they tried several times to arrest him and could not find him.
• On 20 December 2019 an anti-terrorism court in Lahore gave him interim bail against a bond of Rs 100,000.
• In January 2020 the judge cancelled that bail when he arrived late for a hearing. He apologised without conditions and was given bail again.
• The Punjab government went to the Lahore High Court to challenge the bail.

He denied taking part in the violence. He told the media that he was being singled out only because he was the Prime Minister’s nephew.

His critics said the opposite. They said any other lawyer seen in that video would have been in jail, and that he was being protected because of his uncle.

We could not find how that case finally ended.

Focal person on legal affairs, 2022

In April 2022 Imran Khan lost power. Within weeks, dozens of cases were being registered against him and his party’s leaders across the country.

In June 2022 the party named Hassan Niazi as its Focal Person on Legal Affairs, reporting directly to Mr Khan.

What does such a person do? In plain words, he is the link between the leader and the lawyers. He keeps track of which case is in which court, arranges for lawyers to appear, and briefs the leader and the media.

The appointment drew criticism. On social media, people asked why a party that had campaigned against family politics was giving a key post to the chairman’s nephew. They called it nepotism. The party replied that he had earned it through years of work.

Arrests in 2023

The year 2023 brought a string of arrests.

What is Jinnah House?

It is the official residence of the army’s corps commander in Lahore. The building has that name because Muhammad Ali Jinnah once owned it. On the evening of 9 May 2023 a crowd broke into the compound, ransacked the house and set it on fire. Pictures of the burning residence became the lasting image of that day.

The state treated the attack as an assault on the army itself. Those accused of leading it were dealt with more harshly than any other group of protesters.

Trial by military court

Most people arrested after 9 May were tried in ordinary anti-terrorism courts. A smaller group, a little over a hundred, were handed to the army and tried by military courts under the Army Act. Hassan Niazi was one of them.

Can a military court try a civilian?

That question went all the way to the top. Here is the short history.

1. October 2023. A bench of the Supreme Court ruled that trying civilians in military courts was against the Constitution.
2. December 2023. A larger bench suspended that ruling while it heard the government’s appeal. The trials could continue, but verdicts were held back.
3. December 2024. The court allowed the military courts to announce their verdicts in the cases that were ready.
4. 2025. The court finally decided the appeal in the government’s favour and held that such trials were lawful.

The verdict

The army’s media office announced the results in two batches in December 2024.

On 26 December 2024 it said that 60 more people had been convicted. The list included Hassan Khan Niazi, with his father’s name given as Hafizullah Niazi. His sentence was ten years of rigorous imprisonment for involvement in the Jinnah House incident.

The army’s statement said that all those convicted kept the right to appeal and to other legal remedies under the Constitution and the law.

“Rigorous imprisonment” is a legal term. It means a prison sentence that includes hard labour, as opposed to “simple imprisonment”, which does not.

How the two kinds of court differ

Reactions at home and abroad

The sentences drew a strong response.

• The PTI rejected them. It said the trials were secret, the accused had no free choice of lawyer and the outcome was decided in advance.
• Foreign governments spoke up. The United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union all expressed concern about civilians being sentenced by military courts and about the lack of open trials.
• Pakistan’s Foreign Office answered that the country was fully committed to its international human rights obligations and that the verdicts were given under a law made by Parliament, in line with a Supreme Court judgment.
• Supporters of the trials said the sentences were not hasty and that due process had been followed.

His challenge in the High Court

He did not accept the verdict. In 2025 he went to the Lahore High Court. His petition makes three main points.

1. After his arrest he was never produced before a civilian court in the 9 May case before being handed to the army.
2. He was singled out from among the hundreds of people arrested in the crackdown.
3. The transfer to military custody was unlawful, so everything that followed, including the court martial and the sentence, should be set aside. In the alternative, he asks to be tried again by a civilian court.

In December 2025 the High Court bench that was to hear his plea stepped aside, and the file went back to the chief justice to be given to another bench. We found no report of a hearing or decision after that.

As far as we can tell, he remains in prison.

What supporters and critics say

Supporters see a young lawyer who served his party for nearly twenty years and is paying for his surname. They note that he was tried in secret by army officers, that the world’s democracies objected, and that his own father, no friend of the PTI, has fought for him in court.

Critics see privilege catching up with a man who behaved as if rules were for other people. They recall the hospital video of 2019 and say he was let off lightly then. On 9 May, they argue, a mob burnt a general’s home, and those who led it must face the consequences in whatever court the law provides.

Both sides are describing real events. What remains open is the legal question in the High Court, and the wider question of how Pakistan wants to deal with political violence.

Timeline: Hassan Niazi at a glance

Why his story matters

• It shows the weight of a family name. In Pakistan a surname can open doors, and it can also make a person a target.
• It is a test case for military justice. How the higher courts deal with challenges like his will shape the limits of military courts for years.
• It shows how one day can decide a life. Before 9 May 2023 he was a party lawyer. After it, he became a prisoner whose case is cited in foreign capitals.

For the vote that removed his uncle’s government and set these events in motion, read our explainer on how a vote of no confidence works.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Geo News, “Military court sentences 60 more culprits over involvement in May 9 riots” — 26 December 2024; his sentence, the army’s statement and reactions.
• The News, “May 9 riots: Imran Khan’s nephew among 60 more sentenced by military court” — 26 December 2024.
• The Friday Times, “Imran appoints nephew as PTI’s focal person on legal affairs” — 7 June 2022.
• Dawn, “Lawyer Hassaan Niazi criticises media for singling him out because I am Imran Khan’s nephew” — December 2019.
• ARY News, “PM’s nephew Hassan Niazi gets bail in PIC attack case” — December 2019.
• Daily Pakistan, “Imran Khan’s nephew Hassan Niazi arrested in Abbottabad” — 13 August 2023.
• Neo News, “Hassaan Niazi in military’s custody for Jinnah House attack, LHC told” — 18 August 2023.
• Geo News, “Hassan Niazi arrested again after being granted bail” — March 2023.
• Wikipedia, “Hafeez Ullah Niazi” — his father’s background.
• Wikipedia, “Family of Imran Khan” — one line on his student-wing role.