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The British government is acquiescing in Pakistan’s imprisonment of former prime minister Imran Khan.

After being removed from office in a no-confidence vote in parliament in April last year, Khan was arrested last month and given a three year sentence for corruption. This was for violating election laws by having failed to properly declare gifts received from foreign dignitaries – an act which in Britain gets merely a warning.

These moves ultimately derive from the real power broker in Pakistan – its army, a close ally of successive UK governments. In the last 10 years, for example, the UK has exported £124m worth of military equipment to Pakistan while training its military officers at the Sandhurst army academy.

Strikingly, Britain has made no prominent public calls to release Khan, unlike numerous press releases issued by the UK government calling on Russia to release opposition figure Alexei Navalny.

For the UK, it’s business as usual. This month, Pakistan’s state-owned weapons manufacturer exhibited at a major arms fair in London. In May, the head of the British army, General Patrick Sanders, even visited Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Asim Munir.

The visit took place amid a crackdown on Khan’s political party, the PTI, which has a huge support among the Pakistani diaspora in UK and US.

The visit also came while British nationals of Pakistani descent who are Khan supporters were being seized in the country, for which family members in Britain were contacting the UK Foreign Office for assistance.

Why is Britain so keen to cosy up to the Pakistani military?