Pakpak
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As for UK he is still on bail the last I heard.
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"MQM founder (Altaf Hussain) gave the orders" to murder Imran Farooq says Pakistan court [Post#77]
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As for UK he is still on bail the last I heard.
The Viper
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Man convicted in Pakistan of murdering Dr Imran Farooq in Edgware in 2010
A man has been convicted in Pakistan for the murder of Dr Imran Farooq in Edgware, north London in September 2010.
The conviction came about following a ground-breaking agreement between the UK and Pakistan, which enabled evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police Service to be shared with Pakistani prosecutors and be presented as part of their case.
The conviction comes almost 10 years after the murder of Dr Farooq and is the culmination of painstaking work by detectives from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, who sifted through thousands of hours of CCTV, spoke with over 4,000 witnesses and collected more than 4,500 exhibits as part of the investigation, which led them to identify the two men who committed the murder outside Dr Farooq’s home in Green Lane, Edgware.
Following a trial in Islamabad, Pakistani national Mohsin Ali Syed, 35 (15.05.85), was found guilty of murder and conspiracy to murder Dr Imran Farooq.
Muhammad Kashif Khan Kamran, 40 (6.07.79), a Pakistani national and the other individual who was identified by Met detectives as being involved in the murder, was also convicted in absentia of murdering Dr Farooq.
Commander Richard Smith, Head of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said: “I am pleased that one of the men we identified as being responsible for the murder of Dr Imran Farooq has finally been brought to justice.
“This outcome would not have been possible were it not for the incredible dedication, skill and determination of the investigation team, who for almost ten years, have never given up in their pursuit of his killers.
“I would also like to pay tribute to Dr Imran Farooq’s widow and his family, who have shown tremendous dignity, strength and patience as we have gone about our investigation.”
Christian Turner, the UK’s High Commissioner to Pakistan, said: “Today’s conviction marks a team effort between law agencies in the UK and Pakistan working together to get justice for the murder of Dr Imran Farooq.
“This ground-breaking legal collaboration meant that evidence gathered by the British police could be shared with Pakistani prosecutors and used in the successful prosecution of Mohsin Ali Syed.”
Dr Farooq was murdered on 16 September 2010 when, after returning home from work, he was approached and brutally and fatally attacked by two men armed with a brick and knives.
Due to Dr Farooq’s standing as a senior figure within the Pakistani political party Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) - and the possibility that the murder was in some way connected to this - the investigation was taken on by officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command.
Initially, there was very little evidence for detectives to use that would help identify the attackers. A small number of witnesses had seen the attack, and provided descriptions of the two men, but there was no CCTV near the house or close by that showed the suspects and no immediate forensic evidence available to help identify the attackers.
Several public appeals, including the release of an e-fit image of one of the attackers, were made in the days, weeks and months following the attack, but these did not lead to any meaningful breakthroughs in the investigation.
As such, detectives set about the task of retracing Dr Farooq’s movements on the days leading up to the attack – collecting thousands of hours of CCTV footage, which included footage from the area around Edgware Underground Station and Station Road.
The first significant breakthrough came when officers spotted a man who seemed to be watching Dr Farooq on the morning of 16 September 2010 as he was using a cashpoint outside Barclays bank in Station Road, Edgware.
The same man, who is wearing a distinctive cap, is then seen to use the cashpoint shortly after. When officers reviewed other CCTV footage from the Station Road area just prior to the murder, they saw a man wearing the same distinctive cap running in the direction of Dr Farooq’s home address.
Further CCTV from the area was examined, and the same individual was also seen on footage from the day before the murder, where he was with another man – both using the same cashpoint outside Barclay’s bank.
Enquiries with the bank linked the cash withdrawals by the man wearing the cap to an account in the name of Mohsin Ali Syed. The account was registered to an address in Stanmore, and when officers visited the address, the landlord confirmed that he had reported Syed missing on 29 September 2010. The landlord revealed that around two weeks before the date of the murder, he had given Syed permission for a friend called ‘Kamran’ to stay at the flat.
The landlord also told officers that Syed was studying at a private college in east London and had been since around February 2010. When detectives contacted the college they discovered that a man called Muhammad Kamran had also enrolled at the college on 8 September 2010 – just over a week before the murder took place. His college enrolment papers showed Kamran had listed Syed’s Stanmore address as being his UK residence.
Officers continued to trawl through CCTV footage gathered from the Edgware Station area and found footage of two men – believed to be Syed and Kamran - together on 14 September 2010. They also found footage of Syed entering the local 99p store on the same date, where he was seen purchasing a pack of knives, matching those recovered from the murder scene.
Detectives analysed flight passenger lists for flights departing the UK in the days after the murder, and found that Syed and Kamran had travelled on a flight from London Heathrow to Colombo, Sri Lanka late on 16 September 2010. Further enquiries by officers showed that both Syed and Kamran then travelled on a flight from Sri Lanka to Karachi, Pakistan on 19 September 2010.
This led to the investigation team publicly announcing in May 2014 that both Syed and Kamran were wanted in connection with the murder. However, officers believed that the pair were likely to still be in Pakistan.
Following the developments in the investigation, a forensic review of the items recovered from the scene was carried out in October 2014. A partial thumb print, which had been found on a knife that was found hidden in a bush near Dr Farooq’s home, was reprocessed and forensic officers were able to confirm that it matched the print on Syed’s UK student visa application.
Enquiries into the pair’s background revealed that both Syed and Kamran were connected to the MQM Party, and confirmed the investigation team’s suspicion that the murder had likely been politically-motivated, given Dr Farooq had been suspended from the party at the time of his death.
In June 2015, Pakistani authorities confirmed to British authorities that they had arrested three men in connection with the murder, one of whom was Syed. Officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command travelled to Pakistan in July and September 2015 to interview the men as part of the ongoing investigation. Upon their return, officers presented their findings from the course of the investigation to the Crown Prosecution Service, and charges against Syed were authorised, although he remained in custody in Pakistan.
The three men in custody in Pakistan, which included Syed, were subsequently charged by Pakistani authorities in connection with the murder of Dr Farooq.
A formal mutual legal assistance (MLA) request by Pakistan to the UK was made in February 2019. This was followed by a temporary change to Pakistani law which provided that the death penalty would not be used in cases where evidence had been transferred under MLA from a state where the death penalty is prohibited. This was further supported by assurances from the Pakistani authorities that the death penalty would not be imposed in this case.
In August 2019, the MLA request was accepted by UK authorities and officers began the process of providing relevant evidence from their investigation to the Pakistani authorities to assist in their prosecution of Syed and Kamran. The temporary change to Pakistani law and the consequent provision of UK evidence in a Pakistani trial were ground-breaking steps forward in legal cooperation between the UK and Pakistan.
The trial continued throughout late 2019, and early 2020 and officers from the investigation team attended court in Pakistan to give evidence and provide details of the Met’s investigation into the murder. A number of UK-based witnesses also gave evidence during the trial in Pakistan via video-link at Hendon Magistrates’ Court.
Following his conviction, Syed was sentenced to life imprisonment. Kamran was convicted in absentia, and remains wanted by Pakistani authorities.
As part of the Pakistani prosecution, a number of other individuals were also convicted of conspiracy to murder Dr Farooq, details of which are available from the Pakistani authorities.
http://news.met.police.uk/news/man-...ing-dr-imran-farooq-in-edgware-in-2010-404974
A man has been convicted in Pakistan for the murder of Dr Imran Farooq in Edgware, north London in September 2010.
The conviction came about following a ground-breaking agreement between the UK and Pakistan, which enabled evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police Service to be shared with Pakistani prosecutors and be presented as part of their case.
The conviction comes almost 10 years after the murder of Dr Farooq and is the culmination of painstaking work by detectives from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, who sifted through thousands of hours of CCTV, spoke with over 4,000 witnesses and collected more than 4,500 exhibits as part of the investigation, which led them to identify the two men who committed the murder outside Dr Farooq’s home in Green Lane, Edgware.
Following a trial in Islamabad, Pakistani national Mohsin Ali Syed, 35 (15.05.85), was found guilty of murder and conspiracy to murder Dr Imran Farooq.
Muhammad Kashif Khan Kamran, 40 (6.07.79), a Pakistani national and the other individual who was identified by Met detectives as being involved in the murder, was also convicted in absentia of murdering Dr Farooq.
Commander Richard Smith, Head of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said: “I am pleased that one of the men we identified as being responsible for the murder of Dr Imran Farooq has finally been brought to justice.
“This outcome would not have been possible were it not for the incredible dedication, skill and determination of the investigation team, who for almost ten years, have never given up in their pursuit of his killers.
“I would also like to pay tribute to Dr Imran Farooq’s widow and his family, who have shown tremendous dignity, strength and patience as we have gone about our investigation.”
Christian Turner, the UK’s High Commissioner to Pakistan, said: “Today’s conviction marks a team effort between law agencies in the UK and Pakistan working together to get justice for the murder of Dr Imran Farooq.
“This ground-breaking legal collaboration meant that evidence gathered by the British police could be shared with Pakistani prosecutors and used in the successful prosecution of Mohsin Ali Syed.”
Dr Farooq was murdered on 16 September 2010 when, after returning home from work, he was approached and brutally and fatally attacked by two men armed with a brick and knives.
Due to Dr Farooq’s standing as a senior figure within the Pakistani political party Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) - and the possibility that the murder was in some way connected to this - the investigation was taken on by officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command.
Initially, there was very little evidence for detectives to use that would help identify the attackers. A small number of witnesses had seen the attack, and provided descriptions of the two men, but there was no CCTV near the house or close by that showed the suspects and no immediate forensic evidence available to help identify the attackers.
Several public appeals, including the release of an e-fit image of one of the attackers, were made in the days, weeks and months following the attack, but these did not lead to any meaningful breakthroughs in the investigation.
As such, detectives set about the task of retracing Dr Farooq’s movements on the days leading up to the attack – collecting thousands of hours of CCTV footage, which included footage from the area around Edgware Underground Station and Station Road.
The first significant breakthrough came when officers spotted a man who seemed to be watching Dr Farooq on the morning of 16 September 2010 as he was using a cashpoint outside Barclays bank in Station Road, Edgware.
The same man, who is wearing a distinctive cap, is then seen to use the cashpoint shortly after. When officers reviewed other CCTV footage from the Station Road area just prior to the murder, they saw a man wearing the same distinctive cap running in the direction of Dr Farooq’s home address.
Further CCTV from the area was examined, and the same individual was also seen on footage from the day before the murder, where he was with another man – both using the same cashpoint outside Barclay’s bank.
Enquiries with the bank linked the cash withdrawals by the man wearing the cap to an account in the name of Mohsin Ali Syed. The account was registered to an address in Stanmore, and when officers visited the address, the landlord confirmed that he had reported Syed missing on 29 September 2010. The landlord revealed that around two weeks before the date of the murder, he had given Syed permission for a friend called ‘Kamran’ to stay at the flat.
The landlord also told officers that Syed was studying at a private college in east London and had been since around February 2010. When detectives contacted the college they discovered that a man called Muhammad Kamran had also enrolled at the college on 8 September 2010 – just over a week before the murder took place. His college enrolment papers showed Kamran had listed Syed’s Stanmore address as being his UK residence.
Officers continued to trawl through CCTV footage gathered from the Edgware Station area and found footage of two men – believed to be Syed and Kamran - together on 14 September 2010. They also found footage of Syed entering the local 99p store on the same date, where he was seen purchasing a pack of knives, matching those recovered from the murder scene.
Detectives analysed flight passenger lists for flights departing the UK in the days after the murder, and found that Syed and Kamran had travelled on a flight from London Heathrow to Colombo, Sri Lanka late on 16 September 2010. Further enquiries by officers showed that both Syed and Kamran then travelled on a flight from Sri Lanka to Karachi, Pakistan on 19 September 2010.
This led to the investigation team publicly announcing in May 2014 that both Syed and Kamran were wanted in connection with the murder. However, officers believed that the pair were likely to still be in Pakistan.
Following the developments in the investigation, a forensic review of the items recovered from the scene was carried out in October 2014. A partial thumb print, which had been found on a knife that was found hidden in a bush near Dr Farooq’s home, was reprocessed and forensic officers were able to confirm that it matched the print on Syed’s UK student visa application.
Enquiries into the pair’s background revealed that both Syed and Kamran were connected to the MQM Party, and confirmed the investigation team’s suspicion that the murder had likely been politically-motivated, given Dr Farooq had been suspended from the party at the time of his death.
In June 2015, Pakistani authorities confirmed to British authorities that they had arrested three men in connection with the murder, one of whom was Syed. Officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command travelled to Pakistan in July and September 2015 to interview the men as part of the ongoing investigation. Upon their return, officers presented their findings from the course of the investigation to the Crown Prosecution Service, and charges against Syed were authorised, although he remained in custody in Pakistan.
The three men in custody in Pakistan, which included Syed, were subsequently charged by Pakistani authorities in connection with the murder of Dr Farooq.
A formal mutual legal assistance (MLA) request by Pakistan to the UK was made in February 2019. This was followed by a temporary change to Pakistani law which provided that the death penalty would not be used in cases where evidence had been transferred under MLA from a state where the death penalty is prohibited. This was further supported by assurances from the Pakistani authorities that the death penalty would not be imposed in this case.
In August 2019, the MLA request was accepted by UK authorities and officers began the process of providing relevant evidence from their investigation to the Pakistani authorities to assist in their prosecution of Syed and Kamran. The temporary change to Pakistani law and the consequent provision of UK evidence in a Pakistani trial were ground-breaking steps forward in legal cooperation between the UK and Pakistan.
The trial continued throughout late 2019, and early 2020 and officers from the investigation team attended court in Pakistan to give evidence and provide details of the Met’s investigation into the murder. A number of UK-based witnesses also gave evidence during the trial in Pakistan via video-link at Hendon Magistrates’ Court.
Following his conviction, Syed was sentenced to life imprisonment. Kamran was convicted in absentia, and remains wanted by Pakistani authorities.
As part of the Pakistani prosecution, a number of other individuals were also convicted of conspiracy to murder Dr Farooq, details of which are available from the Pakistani authorities.
http://news.met.police.uk/news/man-...ing-dr-imran-farooq-in-edgware-in-2010-404974
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I have deleted a few posts in this thread which are pretty low quality - suggest dont post in it if you cannot control your emotions.
Abdullah719
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Following a ground-breaking agreement between the UK and Pakistan, a man has been convicted for the 2010 murder of Dr Imran Farooq<br><br>Detectives painstakingly sifted through thousands of hours of CCTV & spoke to 4000 witnesses to construct a timeline leading to the brutal murder ��</p>— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) <a href="https://twitter.com/metpoliceuk/status/1273632594626822146?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 18, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<iframe src="https://streamable.com/e/ziibao" width="360" height="360" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe src="https://streamable.com/e/ziibao" width="360" height="360" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Knight_Rider
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Dear Wise Moderator,
How does the above post relates to the Thread title?
Where does Met Police endorses the link to Altaf Hussain?
How does the above post relates to the Thread title?
Where does Met Police endorses the link to Altaf Hussain?
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The court says Altaf ordered the hit.
Knight_Rider
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I am asking about where does “Met Police” mentions/endorsed Altaf’s involvement and you are replying that the “Pakistani Military Court” has given that verdict.
So again, where does UK’s Met police says that?
And if they haven’t, why are you trying to give that impression?
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Where exactly have I said that the Met Police have said that? A Pakistani court has clearly said that and you can read that above.
Abdullah719
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Altaf Hussain turned youngsters into RAW agents, says Kamal
(Karachi) Pak Sar Zameen Party (PSP) leader Mustafa Kamal has said that Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain has turned several youngsters into RAW agents.
Addressing a press conference in Karachi on Sunday, he said that Altaf Hussain is a murderer who ordered killing of several people.
He added, "We initiated Jihad against him as he is the killer of our generations." Kamal said that the MQM chief killed Imran Farooq and it has now been proved. "Both the killer and the victim's families have suffered and are badly affected," he remarked.
"Altaf Hussain is now conspiracing against the country and is raising the slogan of Sindhu Desh," he said.
He said that people had been left to die of hunger and disease, while health, education, employment, and justice were out of their reach.
https://www.brecorder.com/news/1006049/altaf-hussain-turned-youngsters-into-raw-agents-says-kamal
(Karachi) Pak Sar Zameen Party (PSP) leader Mustafa Kamal has said that Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain has turned several youngsters into RAW agents.
Addressing a press conference in Karachi on Sunday, he said that Altaf Hussain is a murderer who ordered killing of several people.
He added, "We initiated Jihad against him as he is the killer of our generations." Kamal said that the MQM chief killed Imran Farooq and it has now been proved. "Both the killer and the victim's families have suffered and are badly affected," he remarked.
"Altaf Hussain is now conspiracing against the country and is raising the slogan of Sindhu Desh," he said.
He said that people had been left to die of hunger and disease, while health, education, employment, and justice were out of their reach.
https://www.brecorder.com/news/1006049/altaf-hussain-turned-youngsters-into-raw-agents-says-kamal
Knight_Rider
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His statements don’t add up, thatswhy Mustafa Kamal has no support in Karachi. He is probably just reading the script handed to him by his Masters.
Jiay Sindh - Sindhu Desh guys are right wing sindhi nationalists who are polar opposites of Altaf Hussain and MQM. There is no commonality or shared interest between the 2. Also Altaf Hussain is no longer in position to call any shots, so he is practically irrelevant.
Nationalism in Different parts of the world have their own (and often valid) reasons like deprivation, unfair treatment etc. The root cause of all this evil in Sindh is the corrupt and dynastic rule of PPP. Why does Pak government and establishment not go after the PPP thugs (despite all the evidence of wrong doings and corruption)?
Why they still choose to just beat the deadhorse of Jiay Sindh and AH, rather than focusing on addressing the real Problem?
Abdullah719
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Convict in Imran Farooq case challenges verdict in IHC
ISLAMABAD: One of the accused found guilty in Dr Imran Farooq’s murder case on Thursday challenged in the Islamabad High Court his conviction handed down by the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) .
The ATC of Islamabad had on June 18 convicted three accused — Moazzam Ali, Mohammad Kashif Kamran and Syed Mohsin Ali — in the MQM leader’s murder case and awarded them life imprisonment.
Moazzam Ali filed the appeal against the ATC verdict in the Islamabad High Court.
Through the appeal, he informed the court that the ATC judge had convicted him despite the fact that evidence with the prosecution was insufficient to connect him with the crime.
He said he had been implicated in the case because of some banking transactions, adding that being a businessman, he had done several banking transactions with different individuals and entities.
According to the appellant, it was an admitted fact that he was not present at the crime scene at the time of the murder of Dr Farooq.
The Counter-Terrorism Wing (CTW) of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) registered a first information report (FIR) alleging that the assassination of Dr Farooq was the result of a conspiracy hatched in the United Kingdom and Pakistan by Altaf Hussain, founder of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Muhammad Anwar, senior member of the MQM, and Iftikhar Hussain. As a result of the conspiracy, Khalid Shamim and Moazzam Ali facilitated and sent Muhammad Kashif Khan Kamran, along with Syed Mohsin Ali, to the United Kingdom to kill Dr Imran Farooq.
Dr Farooq was killed in Green Lane, Edgeware area of London, on Sept 16, 2010.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1566694/convict-in-imran-farooq-case-challenges-verdict-in-ihc
ISLAMABAD: One of the accused found guilty in Dr Imran Farooq’s murder case on Thursday challenged in the Islamabad High Court his conviction handed down by the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) .
The ATC of Islamabad had on June 18 convicted three accused — Moazzam Ali, Mohammad Kashif Kamran and Syed Mohsin Ali — in the MQM leader’s murder case and awarded them life imprisonment.
Moazzam Ali filed the appeal against the ATC verdict in the Islamabad High Court.
Through the appeal, he informed the court that the ATC judge had convicted him despite the fact that evidence with the prosecution was insufficient to connect him with the crime.
He said he had been implicated in the case because of some banking transactions, adding that being a businessman, he had done several banking transactions with different individuals and entities.
According to the appellant, it was an admitted fact that he was not present at the crime scene at the time of the murder of Dr Farooq.
The Counter-Terrorism Wing (CTW) of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) registered a first information report (FIR) alleging that the assassination of Dr Farooq was the result of a conspiracy hatched in the United Kingdom and Pakistan by Altaf Hussain, founder of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Muhammad Anwar, senior member of the MQM, and Iftikhar Hussain. As a result of the conspiracy, Khalid Shamim and Moazzam Ali facilitated and sent Muhammad Kashif Khan Kamran, along with Syed Mohsin Ali, to the United Kingdom to kill Dr Imran Farooq.
Dr Farooq was killed in Green Lane, Edgeware area of London, on Sept 16, 2010.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1566694/convict-in-imran-farooq-case-challenges-verdict-in-ihc
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LONDON: The British government has fined Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Altaf Hussain for tax evasion of more than £2 million and an investigation is already underway to determine the full extent of the MQM leader’s dues.
Documents seen by this reporter show that Altaf Hussain has been fined for not paying over £2 million to the national exchequer over a period of 20 years from large earnings running into millions of pounds.
The tax investigation is based on income, payments, assets accumulation and National Insurance contributions which were never paid between 1995 and 2015. The investigation is based on the estimated income and monthly expenditures of the MQM leader and his workers.
At his home in Edgware, Hussain is protected round-the-clock by three full-time bouncers; two maids; a full-time driver, and a cook. His house expenditure alone and settlement payment to his former wife Fiza Gabol and daughter Afzaa is estimated to be around £50,000 per month. This amount doesn’t include the payments made to Hussain’s party staff who man the London office full-time and have been doing so for over 20 years.
Dozens of people have worked in a full-time and part-time capacity at MQM’s International Secretariat. At its peak, nearly 20 people were on the payroll of the party and it is understood that the recipients were getting cash in hand as many of them also received government benefits for living and income.
According to a source close to Altaf Hussain, the MQM founder has contested the civil proceedings stating that he never earned any money, has never been employed and was not obliged to pay income tax to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). He has told the investigators that he has been managing his life through donations given by loyalists from Pakistan and abroad and as head of a political party he was entrusted to use those funds to maintain his lifestyle – free of taxes.
Although the MQM leader has contested the fine through his lawyers and the investigation is of a criminal nature, the investigation is so wide-ranging that it has badly impacted the financial situation of the MQM leader. Sources within the MQM have confirmed that the HMRC’s investigation is amongst the main reasons behind Muhammad Anwar and Tariq Mir’s decision to part ways with Hussain.
Both Mir and Anwar dealt with taxation and financial issues for the party for over two years – until relations broke down around four years ago. Mir and Anwar are qualified accountants and were responsible for the financial and tax matters of Hussain.
Both provided a base to the MQM founder in 1994 at their accountancy firm in Mill Hill when Altaf left Karachi for London.
The MQM founder has accused Mir and Anwar for not guiding him properly and for failing to pay dues to the government while they were the ones responsible for all the financial matters. This was why Altaf Hussain asked his followers to protest outside Mir's residential address in 2019.
Both Anwar and Mir have been named in the HMRC investigation and Hussain’s lawyers have told the government department that the blame for not paying the arrears and dues should rest with them as he personally did not handle any financial matters.
The HMRC has not blamed Mir and Anwar of any wrongdoing. Papers seen by this reporter show that in their submission, Mir and Anwar have told the investigators that Hussain didn not listen to their advice on managing monies, and was the sole person to decide where the funds were to be allocated.
Hussain, Mir and Anwar have been at odds over the transfer of two properties worth nearly £1.5 million to the MQM founder’s name.
Anwar and Mir are titleholders – and legal owners of 221 Whitchurch Lane and 185 Whitchurch lane properties, however, MQM is the beneficial owner of the properties. Although, currently the two properties are occupied by the people close to Hussain, legally Anwar and Mir are owners of the properties.
When Altaf Hussain pressed them to transfer the properties, Mir and Anwar told him privately first and then through lawyers they that they awaited the final resolution of the HMRC case.
In a legal letter sent to Hussain, Anwar and Mir had written that “the on-going HMRC inquiry” was their concern and that they expected Hussain to discharge all dues, arrears or penalties payable to the HMRC.
Both of them have further said that they will not be transferring the two properties to Altaf Hussain under any circumstances. They have said that one property will be transferred to Dr Imran Farooq’s widow Shumaila Imran Farooq and the other to the relatives of MQM-Pakistan’s martyrs.
The HMRC is currently of the view that paying taxes was the responsibility of Altaf Hussain, not any other individual or anyone else associated with him.
https://www.geo.tv/latest/305837-uk-govt-fines-altaf-hussain-for-over-2-million-tax-evasion
Documents seen by this reporter show that Altaf Hussain has been fined for not paying over £2 million to the national exchequer over a period of 20 years from large earnings running into millions of pounds.
The tax investigation is based on income, payments, assets accumulation and National Insurance contributions which were never paid between 1995 and 2015. The investigation is based on the estimated income and monthly expenditures of the MQM leader and his workers.
At his home in Edgware, Hussain is protected round-the-clock by three full-time bouncers; two maids; a full-time driver, and a cook. His house expenditure alone and settlement payment to his former wife Fiza Gabol and daughter Afzaa is estimated to be around £50,000 per month. This amount doesn’t include the payments made to Hussain’s party staff who man the London office full-time and have been doing so for over 20 years.
Dozens of people have worked in a full-time and part-time capacity at MQM’s International Secretariat. At its peak, nearly 20 people were on the payroll of the party and it is understood that the recipients were getting cash in hand as many of them also received government benefits for living and income.
According to a source close to Altaf Hussain, the MQM founder has contested the civil proceedings stating that he never earned any money, has never been employed and was not obliged to pay income tax to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). He has told the investigators that he has been managing his life through donations given by loyalists from Pakistan and abroad and as head of a political party he was entrusted to use those funds to maintain his lifestyle – free of taxes.
Although the MQM leader has contested the fine through his lawyers and the investigation is of a criminal nature, the investigation is so wide-ranging that it has badly impacted the financial situation of the MQM leader. Sources within the MQM have confirmed that the HMRC’s investigation is amongst the main reasons behind Muhammad Anwar and Tariq Mir’s decision to part ways with Hussain.
Both Mir and Anwar dealt with taxation and financial issues for the party for over two years – until relations broke down around four years ago. Mir and Anwar are qualified accountants and were responsible for the financial and tax matters of Hussain.
Both provided a base to the MQM founder in 1994 at their accountancy firm in Mill Hill when Altaf left Karachi for London.
The MQM founder has accused Mir and Anwar for not guiding him properly and for failing to pay dues to the government while they were the ones responsible for all the financial matters. This was why Altaf Hussain asked his followers to protest outside Mir's residential address in 2019.
Both Anwar and Mir have been named in the HMRC investigation and Hussain’s lawyers have told the government department that the blame for not paying the arrears and dues should rest with them as he personally did not handle any financial matters.
The HMRC has not blamed Mir and Anwar of any wrongdoing. Papers seen by this reporter show that in their submission, Mir and Anwar have told the investigators that Hussain didn not listen to their advice on managing monies, and was the sole person to decide where the funds were to be allocated.
Hussain, Mir and Anwar have been at odds over the transfer of two properties worth nearly £1.5 million to the MQM founder’s name.
Anwar and Mir are titleholders – and legal owners of 221 Whitchurch Lane and 185 Whitchurch lane properties, however, MQM is the beneficial owner of the properties. Although, currently the two properties are occupied by the people close to Hussain, legally Anwar and Mir are owners of the properties.
When Altaf Hussain pressed them to transfer the properties, Mir and Anwar told him privately first and then through lawyers they that they awaited the final resolution of the HMRC case.
In a legal letter sent to Hussain, Anwar and Mir had written that “the on-going HMRC inquiry” was their concern and that they expected Hussain to discharge all dues, arrears or penalties payable to the HMRC.
Both of them have further said that they will not be transferring the two properties to Altaf Hussain under any circumstances. They have said that one property will be transferred to Dr Imran Farooq’s widow Shumaila Imran Farooq and the other to the relatives of MQM-Pakistan’s martyrs.
The HMRC is currently of the view that paying taxes was the responsibility of Altaf Hussain, not any other individual or anyone else associated with him.
https://www.geo.tv/latest/305837-uk-govt-fines-altaf-hussain-for-over-2-million-tax-evasion
Abdullah719
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Altaf in trouble: MQM-P starts legal claims for 7 London properties
The Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) has surprisingly initiated legal claims regarding ownership of seven expensive London properties against the party founder Altaf Hussain, his brother Iqbal Hussain and five other associates at the London High Court, reported a local news outlet on Wednesday.
Since the party broke up after the Altaf’s August 16 speech, this is the first time MQM-P has taken any action against the founder or his associates. The claim has been launched in the MQM-P’s capacity as the beneficiary of the trust that holds the seven London properties.
Reportedly, the legal claim for the possession of seven prime location properties – which are valued at over £10 million – was initiated through a London law firm Legis Chambers this week.
Reportedly, the properties which are being claimed are Abbey View house, High View Gardens first house, Whitchurch Lane first house, Brookfield Avenue house, High View Gardens second house, Whitchurch Lane second house, and the MQM 1st Floor Elizabeth House office.
Altaf of Abbey View, Iqbal Hussain of Exchange Boulevard, Glendale Heights, Illinois, Tariq Mir of West London, Muhammad Anwar of Edgware, Iftikhar Hussain of High View, Gardens Edgware, Qasim Raza of Cowper Gardens, and Euro Property Developments of Highview Gardens, Edgware were listed as defendants in the claim document.
Speaking on this case, Barrister Nazar Mohammad of Legis Chambers said, “The purpose of the claim is to obtain declaratory relief from the High Court as to trust assets which are held by the Defendants as trustees for the benefit of the MQM-P. In addition to the declarations of trusts, there are other sworn court documents which affirm and attest that the trust assets belong to the MQM. There are specific trust documents disclosed within the court file lodged at court and served on the individual defendants.”
According to the document, the court claim informs the defendants “the Muttahida Quami Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) is an unincorporated association registered as a political party in Pakistan”, and it maintains that MQM Pakistan is “the beneficiary of bare trusts and/or resulting trusts”.
The MQM-P has asked Altaf and others to account for “use and occupation rent against all defendants” and “the defendants to be made jointly and severally liable for costs”.
The claimant further asserts that the Iftikhar Hussain and Qasim Raza (fifth and sixth defendants) are dishonest assisters.
MQM’s former senior leaders Muhammad Anwar and Tariq Mir have already told Altaf that they will not hand over the control of the two Whitchurch Lane properties.
https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/20...-starts-legal-claims-for-7-london-properties/
The Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) has surprisingly initiated legal claims regarding ownership of seven expensive London properties against the party founder Altaf Hussain, his brother Iqbal Hussain and five other associates at the London High Court, reported a local news outlet on Wednesday.
Since the party broke up after the Altaf’s August 16 speech, this is the first time MQM-P has taken any action against the founder or his associates. The claim has been launched in the MQM-P’s capacity as the beneficiary of the trust that holds the seven London properties.
Reportedly, the legal claim for the possession of seven prime location properties – which are valued at over £10 million – was initiated through a London law firm Legis Chambers this week.
Reportedly, the properties which are being claimed are Abbey View house, High View Gardens first house, Whitchurch Lane first house, Brookfield Avenue house, High View Gardens second house, Whitchurch Lane second house, and the MQM 1st Floor Elizabeth House office.
Altaf of Abbey View, Iqbal Hussain of Exchange Boulevard, Glendale Heights, Illinois, Tariq Mir of West London, Muhammad Anwar of Edgware, Iftikhar Hussain of High View, Gardens Edgware, Qasim Raza of Cowper Gardens, and Euro Property Developments of Highview Gardens, Edgware were listed as defendants in the claim document.
Speaking on this case, Barrister Nazar Mohammad of Legis Chambers said, “The purpose of the claim is to obtain declaratory relief from the High Court as to trust assets which are held by the Defendants as trustees for the benefit of the MQM-P. In addition to the declarations of trusts, there are other sworn court documents which affirm and attest that the trust assets belong to the MQM. There are specific trust documents disclosed within the court file lodged at court and served on the individual defendants.”
According to the document, the court claim informs the defendants “the Muttahida Quami Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) is an unincorporated association registered as a political party in Pakistan”, and it maintains that MQM Pakistan is “the beneficiary of bare trusts and/or resulting trusts”.
The MQM-P has asked Altaf and others to account for “use and occupation rent against all defendants” and “the defendants to be made jointly and severally liable for costs”.
The claimant further asserts that the Iftikhar Hussain and Qasim Raza (fifth and sixth defendants) are dishonest assisters.
MQM’s former senior leaders Muhammad Anwar and Tariq Mir have already told Altaf that they will not hand over the control of the two Whitchurch Lane properties.
https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/20...-starts-legal-claims-for-7-london-properties/
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LONDON: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Altaf Hussain has claimed he is facing financial ruin and is unable to pay his bills and expenditures.
The claims from Altaf Hussain came three weeks after the London High Court’s Deputy High Court Judge Peter Knox issued freezing orders on six properties controlled by the MQM founder, following an application for the takeover of these properties by the MQM-Pakistan.
Late on Monday night, the MQM leader’s deputy Mustafa Azizabadi issued a hand-written letter by Altaf Hussain from the MQM-London’s official Twitter account, appealing for funds and claiming that his financial situation has worsened.
The judge ordered that Altaf Hussain can continue to use Abbey View house, High View Gardens first house, Whitchurch Lane first house, Brookfield Avenue house, High View Gardens second house, Whitchurch Lane second house, and the MQM's 1st Floor Elizabeth House office till the outcome of the dispute between him and MQM-Pakistan.
However, the judge barred Altaf Hussain and his associates from selling these properties.
The letter from Hussain claimed that he has come under serious financial stress after the event of 22 August 2016 when Hussain raised slogans against the unity of Pakistan and his party effectively sacked him.
Hussain claimed that he has sold two properties since then run hte affairs of the party to "look after the families of martyrs and to pay for the costs of running MQM operations.”
He further claimed that legal cases against him in Britain “have caused huge financial strains” on his resources.
It can be confirmed that the cases against Hussain have been initiated by his former colleagues in London and from Karachi and none of these cases has anything to do with any Pakistani agency.
MQM-Pakistan’s lawyer Barrister Nazar Mohammad said he lodged a case at the London High Court on the request of MQM-Pakistan’s leader Syed Aminul Haq.
Altaf Hussain also faces a defamation claim from prominent Pakistani anchor Saleem Safi who hosts Jirga show on Geo News. Hussain had made serious accusations against Saleem Safi in a broadcast in relation to Taleban and Pakistan’s spy agencies.
Saleem Safi’s lawyer Rizwan Sulehria said he had sued Hussain on behalf of Safi over seriously defamatory and false allegations made against him. “Saleem Safi instructed me [to sue him] after Altaf Hussain made baseless [allegations] against Saleem Safi. We have engaged Altaf Hussain’s lawyers and will be issuing court proceedings soon.”
Hussain further claimed in the letter: “I have not been able to pay the council tax, gas and electricity bills and other expenditures due to financial issues. I request you to consider offering your financial support to help the movement.”
Mustafa Azizabadi further tweeted that the MQM is “in extreme financial crisis, please help the party”.
Azizabadi added he was writing "with a broken heart" that the leader who “personally distributed millions and billions amongst the party workers and got his followers to become MNAs, MPAs, Senators, ministers, advisors and mayors who became billionaires but the same leader is today asking for financial help”.
Exactly a year ago in November last year, Altaf Hussain had requested Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for help by giving asylum and financial help to him and his companions.
In a speech watched online by thousands of people, the MQM leader had said he would like to travel to India because his grandfathers are buried there.
The MQM founder had requested the Indian government: "If India's Prime Minister Mr. Modi allows me to come to India and provides me asylum with my colleagues, I am ready to come to India along with my colleagues because my grandfather is buried there. My grandmother is buried there and thousands of my relatives are buried there in India. I want to go to India to their graves."
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has charged Altaf Hussain and he will stand trial in about three months at the Old Bailey.
Source GEO
The claims from Altaf Hussain came three weeks after the London High Court’s Deputy High Court Judge Peter Knox issued freezing orders on six properties controlled by the MQM founder, following an application for the takeover of these properties by the MQM-Pakistan.
Late on Monday night, the MQM leader’s deputy Mustafa Azizabadi issued a hand-written letter by Altaf Hussain from the MQM-London’s official Twitter account, appealing for funds and claiming that his financial situation has worsened.
The judge ordered that Altaf Hussain can continue to use Abbey View house, High View Gardens first house, Whitchurch Lane first house, Brookfield Avenue house, High View Gardens second house, Whitchurch Lane second house, and the MQM's 1st Floor Elizabeth House office till the outcome of the dispute between him and MQM-Pakistan.
However, the judge barred Altaf Hussain and his associates from selling these properties.
The letter from Hussain claimed that he has come under serious financial stress after the event of 22 August 2016 when Hussain raised slogans against the unity of Pakistan and his party effectively sacked him.
Hussain claimed that he has sold two properties since then run hte affairs of the party to "look after the families of martyrs and to pay for the costs of running MQM operations.”
He further claimed that legal cases against him in Britain “have caused huge financial strains” on his resources.
It can be confirmed that the cases against Hussain have been initiated by his former colleagues in London and from Karachi and none of these cases has anything to do with any Pakistani agency.
MQM-Pakistan’s lawyer Barrister Nazar Mohammad said he lodged a case at the London High Court on the request of MQM-Pakistan’s leader Syed Aminul Haq.
Altaf Hussain also faces a defamation claim from prominent Pakistani anchor Saleem Safi who hosts Jirga show on Geo News. Hussain had made serious accusations against Saleem Safi in a broadcast in relation to Taleban and Pakistan’s spy agencies.
Saleem Safi’s lawyer Rizwan Sulehria said he had sued Hussain on behalf of Safi over seriously defamatory and false allegations made against him. “Saleem Safi instructed me [to sue him] after Altaf Hussain made baseless [allegations] against Saleem Safi. We have engaged Altaf Hussain’s lawyers and will be issuing court proceedings soon.”
Hussain further claimed in the letter: “I have not been able to pay the council tax, gas and electricity bills and other expenditures due to financial issues. I request you to consider offering your financial support to help the movement.”
Mustafa Azizabadi further tweeted that the MQM is “in extreme financial crisis, please help the party”.
Azizabadi added he was writing "with a broken heart" that the leader who “personally distributed millions and billions amongst the party workers and got his followers to become MNAs, MPAs, Senators, ministers, advisors and mayors who became billionaires but the same leader is today asking for financial help”.
Exactly a year ago in November last year, Altaf Hussain had requested Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for help by giving asylum and financial help to him and his companions.
In a speech watched online by thousands of people, the MQM leader had said he would like to travel to India because his grandfathers are buried there.
The MQM founder had requested the Indian government: "If India's Prime Minister Mr. Modi allows me to come to India and provides me asylum with my colleagues, I am ready to come to India along with my colleagues because my grandfather is buried there. My grandmother is buried there and thousands of my relatives are buried there in India. I want to go to India to their graves."
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has charged Altaf Hussain and he will stand trial in about three months at the Old Bailey.
Source GEO
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LONDON/ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities on Thursday declared MQM founder Altaf Hussain one of the most wanted terrorists of the country, listing him for the first time ever in the Federal Investigation Agency's (FIA) Red Book.
The Red Book, compiled by the FIA's Counter-Terrorism Wing (CTW), also included the names of Muhammad Anwar, Iftikhar Hussain, and Kashif Khan Kamran — other MQM leaders who were declared absconders by an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan.
The four men, including MQM's Altaf Hussain, were allegedly involved in the murder of the party's former leader Dr Imran Farooq, but never joined the investigation.
"[They all are] involved in murder case of Imran Farooq [and face charges under] 01/15; dated 04.12.2015, u/s 302, 34, 120-B, 109 PPC,7ATA, PS CTW /FIA Islamabad," the official FIA document read.
Earlier this year, in June, an anti-terrorism court in Islamabad had awarded life imprisonment to Khalid Shamim, Mohsin Ali Syed, and Moazzam Ali — all members of MQM — and declared Anwar, Hussain, his cousin, and Khan as absconders.
It had also called on the UK government to extradite Anwar, Hussain, and the MQM founder to Pakistan but it's understood that Britain has taken no action on the request so far.
The FIA listed the aforementioned characters for the first time ever while compiling this document, which profiled 1,210 other terrorists, of which a majority — 737 — are wanted by police in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Another 161 suspects are wanted by the law enforcement agencies in Balochistan, some 122 in Punjab, more than 100 in Sindh, 30 in Gilgit-Baltistan, and 32 suspects in Islamabad.
A spokesperson for the Scotland Yard said they were in touch with the Pakistani authorities and would take action if any new actionable evidence came up.
It’s believed that Kashif Khan Kamran — who helped Mohsin Ali Syed kill Dr Farooq — died years ago in police custody in Karachi. While there has been no official confirmation of his death, his name has now appeared in the FIA's Most Wanted Terrorists list.
Read more: MQM founder claims financial ruin after six properties in London frozen
On Thursday, Muhammad Anwar had told Geo News in a conversation that he never had anything to do with Dr Farooq’s killing.
"The UK police has investigated the case fully and found nothing against me and they would have charged me and others of murder if they had any proofs but they didn’t which shows the allegations are false," he said.
Anwar said those who killed Dr Farooq had been convicted on the basis of evidence provided by Scotland Yard, which "investigated the case for ten years".
"The list by the FIA is politically motivated," he added.
Dr Farooq, 50, was living in exile in the UK for more than a decade before his death. He was found dead on September 16, 2010, near his residence in the north London neighbourhood of Edgware, having suffered multiple stab wounds and head injuries.
After convicting Syed, Khan, and Shamim, the Islamabad court had additionally issued an arrest warrant for Altaf Hussain, declaring that he had ordered the killing.
The MQM founder has denied any role in the killing, maintaining that Dr Farooq was "like a brother to him" and that his murder was a conspiracy against him.
https://www.geo.tv/latest/318223-mq...ins-name-added-to-most-wanted-terrorists-list
The Red Book, compiled by the FIA's Counter-Terrorism Wing (CTW), also included the names of Muhammad Anwar, Iftikhar Hussain, and Kashif Khan Kamran — other MQM leaders who were declared absconders by an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan.
The four men, including MQM's Altaf Hussain, were allegedly involved in the murder of the party's former leader Dr Imran Farooq, but never joined the investigation.
"[They all are] involved in murder case of Imran Farooq [and face charges under] 01/15; dated 04.12.2015, u/s 302, 34, 120-B, 109 PPC,7ATA, PS CTW /FIA Islamabad," the official FIA document read.
Earlier this year, in June, an anti-terrorism court in Islamabad had awarded life imprisonment to Khalid Shamim, Mohsin Ali Syed, and Moazzam Ali — all members of MQM — and declared Anwar, Hussain, his cousin, and Khan as absconders.
It had also called on the UK government to extradite Anwar, Hussain, and the MQM founder to Pakistan but it's understood that Britain has taken no action on the request so far.
The FIA listed the aforementioned characters for the first time ever while compiling this document, which profiled 1,210 other terrorists, of which a majority — 737 — are wanted by police in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Another 161 suspects are wanted by the law enforcement agencies in Balochistan, some 122 in Punjab, more than 100 in Sindh, 30 in Gilgit-Baltistan, and 32 suspects in Islamabad.
A spokesperson for the Scotland Yard said they were in touch with the Pakistani authorities and would take action if any new actionable evidence came up.
It’s believed that Kashif Khan Kamran — who helped Mohsin Ali Syed kill Dr Farooq — died years ago in police custody in Karachi. While there has been no official confirmation of his death, his name has now appeared in the FIA's Most Wanted Terrorists list.
Read more: MQM founder claims financial ruin after six properties in London frozen
On Thursday, Muhammad Anwar had told Geo News in a conversation that he never had anything to do with Dr Farooq’s killing.
"The UK police has investigated the case fully and found nothing against me and they would have charged me and others of murder if they had any proofs but they didn’t which shows the allegations are false," he said.
Anwar said those who killed Dr Farooq had been convicted on the basis of evidence provided by Scotland Yard, which "investigated the case for ten years".
"The list by the FIA is politically motivated," he added.
Dr Farooq, 50, was living in exile in the UK for more than a decade before his death. He was found dead on September 16, 2010, near his residence in the north London neighbourhood of Edgware, having suffered multiple stab wounds and head injuries.
After convicting Syed, Khan, and Shamim, the Islamabad court had additionally issued an arrest warrant for Altaf Hussain, declaring that he had ordered the killing.
The MQM founder has denied any role in the killing, maintaining that Dr Farooq was "like a brother to him" and that his murder was a conspiracy against him.
https://www.geo.tv/latest/318223-mq...ins-name-added-to-most-wanted-terrorists-list
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ISLAMABAD: Auditors have found irregularities in hiring of a British law firm for collecting evidence against MQM’s exiled leader Altaf Hussain in the Dr Imran Farooq murder case, which resulted in a Rs24.43 million loss to the exchequer.
This was revealed by the Auditor General of Pakistan in a report tabled during a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Thursday.
During the meeting, PAC member Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed asked the interior ministry to explain the purpose for which the law firm was hired.
Interior secretary Yousaf Naseem Khokhar said the British law firm was hired in connection with the Dr Imran Farooq murder case in which Altaf Hussain was a suspect.
He said the law firm was required to collect certain record and coordinate with the British authorities in the matter.
British law firm M/s Guernica 37 International Justice Chambers, United Kingdom, was one of the sources of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) which also probed the money trail of the properties of the Sharif family pursuant to the judgement of the Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case.
PAC informed process caused Rs24.4m loss to exchequer
As per the audit report submitted to the PAC, under the guidelines laid down by the law ministry on June 3, 2015 “every government department or semi-government or public corporate body shall seek concurrence of the law, justice and human rights division for engagement of lawyer where professional fee exceeds Rs0.3 million”.
The report, however, highlighted that the ministry of interior vide sanction no 3/163/2016-Law dated March 3, 2019 made a payment of Rs24.4m to M/s Guernica International Justice Chamber, United Kingdom, on account of legal fee and travelling charges.
The auditors pointed out that “the expenditure of Rs24.4 million was incurred without concurrence of the ministry of law and justice. The ministry of interior signed the agreement with the above law firm on February 01, 2018, which became retrospectively effective from October 30, 2017”.
The report added that original quotations and comparative statements were not produced to the AG office. The firm claimed UK pounds 4,530, equal to Rs0.83m, as cost of air tickets and travelling charges without even providing original air tickets and relevant documents.
The interior ministry on the other hand claimed that Rs24.4m was incurred in accordance with procurement rules and names of three different British law firms and their charges were obtained and law firm Guernica International with Barrister Toby Cadman was shortlisted as he possessed the requisite credentials.
The ministry further stated that the law and justice division was taken on board after seeking approval of Mr Cadman as a solicitor to present cases in the UK. Law and justice division recommended the same for seeking approval of the attorney general. Later on, the attorney general endorsed recommendations made by the law ministry.
The interior secretary informed the committee that the prime minister had approved a standard operating procedure (SOP) for regularisation of such amounts. He said that as the SOP was notified, a meeting was held under the chairmanship of the attorney general in the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
He said that the attorney general’s office and the law and justice division concurred recommendations of the ministry of interior regarding ex-post facto approval for the nomination of Mr Cadman as the solicitor.
According to the website of the law firm, “Guernica International Justice Chamber have been engaged by the Government of Pakistan to investigate a Pakistani group located in the United Kingdom... and to prepare an investigative report to file with the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, Crown Prosecution Service of England and Wales, foreign law enforcement and prosecutorial authorities into a series of allegations including murder, enforced disappearance, extortion, money laundering and/or proceeds of crime, incitement to commit acts of violence and to engage in terrorist activities.”
Published in Dawn, December 26th, 2020
This was revealed by the Auditor General of Pakistan in a report tabled during a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Thursday.
During the meeting, PAC member Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed asked the interior ministry to explain the purpose for which the law firm was hired.
Interior secretary Yousaf Naseem Khokhar said the British law firm was hired in connection with the Dr Imran Farooq murder case in which Altaf Hussain was a suspect.
He said the law firm was required to collect certain record and coordinate with the British authorities in the matter.
British law firm M/s Guernica 37 International Justice Chambers, United Kingdom, was one of the sources of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) which also probed the money trail of the properties of the Sharif family pursuant to the judgement of the Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case.
PAC informed process caused Rs24.4m loss to exchequer
As per the audit report submitted to the PAC, under the guidelines laid down by the law ministry on June 3, 2015 “every government department or semi-government or public corporate body shall seek concurrence of the law, justice and human rights division for engagement of lawyer where professional fee exceeds Rs0.3 million”.
The report, however, highlighted that the ministry of interior vide sanction no 3/163/2016-Law dated March 3, 2019 made a payment of Rs24.4m to M/s Guernica International Justice Chamber, United Kingdom, on account of legal fee and travelling charges.
The auditors pointed out that “the expenditure of Rs24.4 million was incurred without concurrence of the ministry of law and justice. The ministry of interior signed the agreement with the above law firm on February 01, 2018, which became retrospectively effective from October 30, 2017”.
The report added that original quotations and comparative statements were not produced to the AG office. The firm claimed UK pounds 4,530, equal to Rs0.83m, as cost of air tickets and travelling charges without even providing original air tickets and relevant documents.
The interior ministry on the other hand claimed that Rs24.4m was incurred in accordance with procurement rules and names of three different British law firms and their charges were obtained and law firm Guernica International with Barrister Toby Cadman was shortlisted as he possessed the requisite credentials.
The ministry further stated that the law and justice division was taken on board after seeking approval of Mr Cadman as a solicitor to present cases in the UK. Law and justice division recommended the same for seeking approval of the attorney general. Later on, the attorney general endorsed recommendations made by the law ministry.
The interior secretary informed the committee that the prime minister had approved a standard operating procedure (SOP) for regularisation of such amounts. He said that as the SOP was notified, a meeting was held under the chairmanship of the attorney general in the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
He said that the attorney general’s office and the law and justice division concurred recommendations of the ministry of interior regarding ex-post facto approval for the nomination of Mr Cadman as the solicitor.
According to the website of the law firm, “Guernica International Justice Chamber have been engaged by the Government of Pakistan to investigate a Pakistani group located in the United Kingdom... and to prepare an investigative report to file with the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, Crown Prosecution Service of England and Wales, foreign law enforcement and prosecutorial authorities into a series of allegations including murder, enforced disappearance, extortion, money laundering and/or proceeds of crime, incitement to commit acts of violence and to engage in terrorist activities.”
Published in Dawn, December 26th, 2020
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US-based MQM-L activist planning killings to trigger sectarian rift in Karachi: officials
A United States-based female activist of Muttahida Qaumi Movement-London (MQM-L) is allegedly planning assassinations to trigger sectarian violence and chaos in Karachi, officials said on Thursday.
Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Omar Shahid Hamid and Colonel Shabbir from Rangers held a press conference in Karachi during which they showed journalists a video in which a woman is seen giving instructions to an unidentified target killer and promising payment upon successful completion of the assassination.
She told the individual to "send his love" to the target and demanded confirmation of the assassination attempt, adding that "our life depends on it."
In the video, she provides details of the payments to be made to the hitman and arrangements for his security and transport while adding that he would be flown abroad after the successful kill.
DIG Hamid and Col Shabbir then identified the woman as a US-based MQM-L activist, Kehkashan Haider. According to DIG Hamid, she has been based in Texas since the 1990s and has remained a close aide of MQM founder Altaf Hussain.
“The MQM-L’s Coordination Committee member, Kehkashan Haider, has established target killer groups in collaboration with India’s RAW and anti-Pakistan Sindhi and Baloch groups to target law enforcement agencies, police and political and religious leaders in Pakistan, particularly in Karachi,” Hamid said.
Colonel Shabbir said their targets had been individuals whose deaths held potential for creating sectarian strife in the city while DIG Hamid added that other targets were politicians of the city. He refused to share any further details about the targets, citing "concerns about their safety".
DIG Hamid said details of the alleged plot to target these personalities were uncovered by the CTD and the Pakistan Rangers after interrogation of recently arrested alleged hitmen affiliated with the MQM-L from Karachi and other parts of Sindh. The interrogations revealed that targeted killing teams had been re-established under directions of the MQM-L chief.
“These new targeted killing teams were being patronised by Kehkashan Haider,” he said.
The CTD has registered a case against Haider under Sections 11-H and 11-N of Anti-Terrorism Act of Pakistan pertaining to terror financing, DIG Hamid said.
"This has always been a purpose of the MQM-L that terrorism is spread in Karachi [...] so there is no doubt that it is a constant effort of theirs to once again plant feet in Karachi."
He said it was "alarming" that a woman based in the US was coordinating such illicit activities in Karachi "like a mafia don".
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs would be approached to "take up this matter with the relevant law enforcement institutions of the US government", according to the police officer.
"A clear line of financial transactions is appearing when we traced bank accounts and transactions," he said, adding that the evidence of financial transactions for terror financing made Pakistan's case stronger.
"If there is any aspect of money laundering in this, [then] it will be investigated according to the Anti-Money Laundering Act and looked at by the FIA [Federal Investigation Agency]."
He gave assurances that investigations into the case would be impartial and would not target any political party, referring to the MQM-Pakistan and Pak Sarzameen Party.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1611908/u...o-trigger-sectarian-rift-in-karachi-officials
A United States-based female activist of Muttahida Qaumi Movement-London (MQM-L) is allegedly planning assassinations to trigger sectarian violence and chaos in Karachi, officials said on Thursday.
Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Omar Shahid Hamid and Colonel Shabbir from Rangers held a press conference in Karachi during which they showed journalists a video in which a woman is seen giving instructions to an unidentified target killer and promising payment upon successful completion of the assassination.
She told the individual to "send his love" to the target and demanded confirmation of the assassination attempt, adding that "our life depends on it."
In the video, she provides details of the payments to be made to the hitman and arrangements for his security and transport while adding that he would be flown abroad after the successful kill.
DIG Hamid and Col Shabbir then identified the woman as a US-based MQM-L activist, Kehkashan Haider. According to DIG Hamid, she has been based in Texas since the 1990s and has remained a close aide of MQM founder Altaf Hussain.
“The MQM-L’s Coordination Committee member, Kehkashan Haider, has established target killer groups in collaboration with India’s RAW and anti-Pakistan Sindhi and Baloch groups to target law enforcement agencies, police and political and religious leaders in Pakistan, particularly in Karachi,” Hamid said.
Colonel Shabbir said their targets had been individuals whose deaths held potential for creating sectarian strife in the city while DIG Hamid added that other targets were politicians of the city. He refused to share any further details about the targets, citing "concerns about their safety".
DIG Hamid said details of the alleged plot to target these personalities were uncovered by the CTD and the Pakistan Rangers after interrogation of recently arrested alleged hitmen affiliated with the MQM-L from Karachi and other parts of Sindh. The interrogations revealed that targeted killing teams had been re-established under directions of the MQM-L chief.
“These new targeted killing teams were being patronised by Kehkashan Haider,” he said.
The CTD has registered a case against Haider under Sections 11-H and 11-N of Anti-Terrorism Act of Pakistan pertaining to terror financing, DIG Hamid said.
"This has always been a purpose of the MQM-L that terrorism is spread in Karachi [...] so there is no doubt that it is a constant effort of theirs to once again plant feet in Karachi."
He said it was "alarming" that a woman based in the US was coordinating such illicit activities in Karachi "like a mafia don".
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs would be approached to "take up this matter with the relevant law enforcement institutions of the US government", according to the police officer.
"A clear line of financial transactions is appearing when we traced bank accounts and transactions," he said, adding that the evidence of financial transactions for terror financing made Pakistan's case stronger.
"If there is any aspect of money laundering in this, [then] it will be investigated according to the Anti-Money Laundering Act and looked at by the FIA [Federal Investigation Agency]."
He gave assurances that investigations into the case would be impartial and would not target any political party, referring to the MQM-Pakistan and Pak Sarzameen Party.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1611908/u...o-trigger-sectarian-rift-in-karachi-officials
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Karachi court acquits MQM workers six years after Nine Zero raid
KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court in Karachi acquitted MQM workers in a case relating to illegal possession of explosives.
The verdict came six years after the 2015 raid at Muttahida Qaumi Movement headquarters Nine Zero.
Rangers arrested many suspected target killers and criminals, including Faisal Mota, Obaid K2, Nadir Shah, Amir Sarpatta, Nauman, Farhan Shabbir, during a raid at Nine Zero in Azizabad on March 11, 2015. A huge cache of arms and ammunition was seized too.
The prosecution had failed to prove the allegations against MQM workers in 52 cases, the court ruled.
Suspected high profile target killers Mota, Obaid K2, Nadir Shah, Amir Sarpatta and others are among those who have been acquitted.
According to the verdict, Mota has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for illegal possession of arms, while Shabbir has been sentenced to eight years imprisonment.
https://www.geo.tv/latest/346863-karachi-court-acquits-mqm-workers-six-years-after-nine-zero-raid
KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court in Karachi acquitted MQM workers in a case relating to illegal possession of explosives.
The verdict came six years after the 2015 raid at Muttahida Qaumi Movement headquarters Nine Zero.
Rangers arrested many suspected target killers and criminals, including Faisal Mota, Obaid K2, Nadir Shah, Amir Sarpatta, Nauman, Farhan Shabbir, during a raid at Nine Zero in Azizabad on March 11, 2015. A huge cache of arms and ammunition was seized too.
The prosecution had failed to prove the allegations against MQM workers in 52 cases, the court ruled.
Suspected high profile target killers Mota, Obaid K2, Nadir Shah, Amir Sarpatta and others are among those who have been acquitted.
According to the verdict, Mota has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for illegal possession of arms, while Shabbir has been sentenced to eight years imprisonment.
https://www.geo.tv/latest/346863-karachi-court-acquits-mqm-workers-six-years-after-nine-zero-raid
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LONDON: Nichola Khan — a social anthropologist and lecturer at Brighton University who has written extensively on Muhajir politics — on Friday gave testimony as an expert witness before the jury in the ‘hate speech’ trial of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) supremo Altaf Hussain.
Dr Khan said the MQM did not just have political and charity wings but also a militant wing, which the party did not acknowledge. She added the party’s workers were “subjected to extrajudicial killings at the hands of Rangers, who violated human rights”, to establish peace in Karachi.
She said Mr Hussain had spoken of “meeting violence with violence” and a total war for Muhajir rights.
Dr Khan also said the MQM was able to totally shut down Karachi to the extent that it would be dangerous to travel on roads. However, after a Rangers operation in the city, MQM’s power had been much diminished by 2016.
Dr Khan produced a written report on the MQM for the court and was cross-examined by both the prosecution and defence teams.
The jury heard that given her research and writing on the MQM, Dr Khan had significant understanding of the matters to be discussed during the trial.
Dr Khan said she has been conducting research into issues of violence in Pakistan for about 20 years and has also written a book called Mohajir Militancy in Pakistan.
She spoke at length about the independence of India and Pakistan, and about Muhajir settlements in the city of Karachi. She said the MQM started off as a student organisation which later evolved into a political party.
About Mr Hussain, Dr Khan said that even after he left Pakistan and moved to the UK in the 90s, he had “absolute control over the party”. She described how MQM would call days of protest and mourning and that Mr Hussain’s control was not relinquished despite his departure from Karachi.
“After the [August 22] speech, the two TV stations, ARY and Samaa, were attacked. There was gunfire,” she said, adding: “One MQM worker was killed in the violence, allegedly by the police.”
Mr Hussain has been charged under section 1(2) of the British Terrorism Act (TACT) 2006, which relates to the encouragement of terrorism, which is defined as being intentional or reckless as to whether members of the public will be directly or indirectly encouraged or otherwise induced by the statement to commit, prepare or instigate such acts or offences.
Mr Hussain has pleaded not guilty, and in police interviews, maintained that he has not committed any offence.
The hearing was adjo*urned in the afternoon and will resume on Monday morning at the Kingston-upon-Thames crown court.
Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2022
Dr Khan said the MQM did not just have political and charity wings but also a militant wing, which the party did not acknowledge. She added the party’s workers were “subjected to extrajudicial killings at the hands of Rangers, who violated human rights”, to establish peace in Karachi.
She said Mr Hussain had spoken of “meeting violence with violence” and a total war for Muhajir rights.
Dr Khan also said the MQM was able to totally shut down Karachi to the extent that it would be dangerous to travel on roads. However, after a Rangers operation in the city, MQM’s power had been much diminished by 2016.
Dr Khan produced a written report on the MQM for the court and was cross-examined by both the prosecution and defence teams.
The jury heard that given her research and writing on the MQM, Dr Khan had significant understanding of the matters to be discussed during the trial.
Dr Khan said she has been conducting research into issues of violence in Pakistan for about 20 years and has also written a book called Mohajir Militancy in Pakistan.
She spoke at length about the independence of India and Pakistan, and about Muhajir settlements in the city of Karachi. She said the MQM started off as a student organisation which later evolved into a political party.
About Mr Hussain, Dr Khan said that even after he left Pakistan and moved to the UK in the 90s, he had “absolute control over the party”. She described how MQM would call days of protest and mourning and that Mr Hussain’s control was not relinquished despite his departure from Karachi.
“After the [August 22] speech, the two TV stations, ARY and Samaa, were attacked. There was gunfire,” she said, adding: “One MQM worker was killed in the violence, allegedly by the police.”
Mr Hussain has been charged under section 1(2) of the British Terrorism Act (TACT) 2006, which relates to the encouragement of terrorism, which is defined as being intentional or reckless as to whether members of the public will be directly or indirectly encouraged or otherwise induced by the statement to commit, prepare or instigate such acts or offences.
Mr Hussain has pleaded not guilty, and in police interviews, maintained that he has not committed any offence.
The hearing was adjo*urned in the afternoon and will resume on Monday morning at the Kingston-upon-Thames crown court.
Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2022
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Long live Altaf bhai
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A court in London was expected to deliver its verdict next week in the case of encouraging terrorism against the Muttahida Qaumi Movement founder Altaf Hussain following completion of arguments by both sides, media reports said on Saturday.
The MQM founder faces two counts of charges related to encouraging terrorism, while delivering two speeches from London via telephone on August 22, 2016. During the trail, Hussain’s lawyer informed the Kingston-upon-Thames crown court that his client would not take the stand.
The arguments in the case concluded on Friday, after which the jury retired for delibrations, according to a report. The judge, Justice May, told the jury that they might conclude that Hussain did not have an answer to the prosecution’s case, but the jurors could not convict him just for his silence.
Justice May told the jury that prosecution had to prove guilt. She also said that the prosecution did not have to prove that acts of terrorism actually occurred, though it was their submission, adding that the meaning of intention and reckless was for the jury to determine.
During the trial, the prosecution argued that Hussain did not “answer, apologise, explain” his innocence or give answers to obvious questions. The defence counsel, however, said Hussain did not have more to add. The counsel also said that Hussain’s apology on Twitter after the speeches demonstrated his regret.
The MQM founder faces two counts of charges related to encouraging terrorism, while delivering two speeches from London via telephone on August 22, 2016. During the trail, Hussain’s lawyer informed the Kingston-upon-Thames crown court that his client would not take the stand.
The arguments in the case concluded on Friday, after which the jury retired for delibrations, according to a report. The judge, Justice May, told the jury that they might conclude that Hussain did not have an answer to the prosecution’s case, but the jurors could not convict him just for his silence.
Justice May told the jury that prosecution had to prove guilt. She also said that the prosecution did not have to prove that acts of terrorism actually occurred, though it was their submission, adding that the meaning of intention and reckless was for the jury to determine.
During the trial, the prosecution argued that Hussain did not “answer, apologise, explain” his innocence or give answers to obvious questions. The defence counsel, however, said Hussain did not have more to add. The counsel also said that Hussain’s apology on Twitter after the speeches demonstrated his regret.
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Altaf Hussain found NOT guilty of encouraging terrorism in Karachi
LONDON: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Altaf Hussain has been found not guilty of encouraging terrorism in Karachi from London contrary to section 1(2) of the Terrorism Act 2006.
At the Kingston Crown Court, a majority of the jury (10 out of 12) declared before Mrs Justice May that they had found Altaf Hussain not to be in violation of the UK’s Anti-Terrorism laws on 22nd August 2016 when he made two speeches from London to his followers in Karachi.
Altaf Hussain had been charged with two counts of encouraging terrorism contrary to section 1(2) of the Terrorism Act 2006.
These relate to two speeches Hussain made on 22n August – first in the morning UK Time and second in the afternoon UK Time – in which he had been alleged by the Crown to have published speeches to crowds “gathered in Karachi, Pakistan the contents of which were likely to be understood by some or all of the members of the public to whom they were published as a direct or indirect encouragement to them to the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism and, at the time he published them, intended them to be so encouraged, or was reckless as to whether they would be so encouraged”.
The CPS had alleged that Altaf Hussain had asked his followers to attack the offices of Geo, ARY and Samaa and shut down the transmission of Geo and other channels for not publishing his pictures, videos and statements after being banned by the Lahore High Court.
Geo and Jang newspaper’s name came up in the proceedings repeatedly as Altaf Hussain mentioned in his speeches that Geo and other channels should be questioned and held accountable for not airing his speeches.
The prosecution had alleged that Altaf Hussain urged violence in his morning speech and asked his followers to bring out DG Rangers Bilal Akbar from the Rangers HQ and also asked his followers to be prepared for violent acts.
The prosecution said that the actual violence took place when Hussain made speech in the afternoon to the hunger strike camp of his party set outside the Karachi Press Club from where the MQM followers marched towards offices of television channels and violence took place outside ARY’s office where one MQM worker died, several people were injured and vehicle were put on fire.
The prosecution presented Brighton University teacher Dr Nichola Khan as its main expert witness on Karachi and MQM’s politics. She told the court that MQM was a victim of the state violence and there was no doubt that Altaf Hussain’s followers were killed, kidnapped, disappeared and tortured and that the law enforcement agencies operated with impunity and were involved in human rights violations.
She also told the court that in turn the MQM was also involved in violence and maintained a militant wing which was never publicly owned and accepted by the party leadership.
After the prosecution case was over, the MQM leader decided not to stand in the witness box for cross-examination by the prosecution. The prosecution told the jury that Altaf Hussain did not “answer, apologise, explain” his innocence or give answers to obvious questions because he doesn’t “doesn’t have an answer”.
Altaf Hussain’s lawyer Rupert Bowers QC had told the jury that it didn’t make sense that Altaf would stand in the dock over events which took place six years ago. He stressed to the jury that Altaf didn’t have anything to hide from the jury and the fact that he apologised on Twitter after his two speeches clearly demonstrated his regret about what happened following his speeches. He stressed, however, that Altaf Hussain’s apology should not be construed as an admission of guilt or wrongdoing.
This was the same stance Altaf Hussain adopted when he was interviewed by the police in 2019 when arrested before being chared. He had told the police that he did nothing wrong and stood by the words of his speech.
Mrs Justice May had given directions to the jury that while convicting Mr Hussain, the jury has to be completely satisfied that Hussain published a speech, that his statements were likely to be understood by a reasonable person hearing them of encouraging terrorism and that Mr Hussain either intended or was reckless as to whether members of the public would be encouraged to commit acts of violence after hearing those broadcast speeches.
The judge had directed that the prosecution does not have to prove that terrorist acts actually occurred. The judge directed that when considering the act of terrorism, the jury must consider the type of act, its design and purpose. To convict, the jury must be persuaded that the act was done to further a religious, political, ideological or racial cause, regardless of whether the cause was justified or not.
The prosecution’s case was that what Altaf Hussain asked of his MQM followers were acts of terrorism, designed to influence the government, and that they were done for a political objective and for that Mr Hussain encouraged violence and that the “whole tone, content and method used” in his speeches “was designed to get the crowd to do something”.
The defence lawyer Rupert Bowers QC had told Kingston Crown Court that Mr Hussain is not a terrorist and should not be convicted of two counts of encouraging terrorism.
The QC had said the jury has been asked by the prosecution not to measure Altaf’s case against cultural yardstick of Pakistan but the yardstick of the law of England and Wales is not same as the yardstick applies in Pakistani context.
He asked the jury to consider what qualifies as terrorism and it is the type of act, design behind the act and purpose of the act. He said the jury should not find Altaf Hussain guilty if they are not sure that he encouraged acts of violence against persons and properties and he will not be guilty if it falls short of “serious violence to persons/property”.
Rupert Bowers QC said it was the prosecution’s witness Dr Nichola Khan who told the court about the “endemic violence that exists in Pakistan, in Karachi” and that’s why the jury should, while applying the law to the actual facts of this case, should consider “what Hussain understood or intended, and what people understood”.
Rupert Bowers QC said the MQM has faced violence in Karachi, throughout and leading up to the 22nd of August 2016 and there was another push by the state against MQM and its followers and a ban was placed on Altaf Hussain. He told the jury that a ban of that kind would be inconceivable in the UK on any leader, as happened in the case of Altaf Hussain and this was confirmed by the prosecution expert witness.
He said that exaggeration happens in Pakistani political context and he knew that he cannot take on the Pakistan Army and didn’t even know if Bilal Akbar was inside the Rangers HQ or not.
Rupert Bowers QC had asked the jury not to convict Altaf Hussain because he “did nothing other than that he has always done in trying to represent an oppressed part of a population by organising what is axiomatically a peaceful protest”.
Altaf Hussain’s lawyer had concluded: “If violence ensued in the latter part of that day, you’ve seen it, he’s regretful of that. In my submission to you, he’s not a terrorist, and I ask you to acquit.”
The jury decided not to convict Altaf Hussain who arrived in the UK around three decades ago. He has never returned to Pakistan ever since but effectively controlled the biggest city of Pakistan until August 2016 when his party split over the same speech for which he has been convicted now. His supporters are not allowed to publicly carry out their activities in Karachi but, according to intelligence sources, his soft support remains in the city, amongst a significant section of the Muhajir communities.
LONDON: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Altaf Hussain has been found not guilty of encouraging terrorism in Karachi from London contrary to section 1(2) of the Terrorism Act 2006.
At the Kingston Crown Court, a majority of the jury (10 out of 12) declared before Mrs Justice May that they had found Altaf Hussain not to be in violation of the UK’s Anti-Terrorism laws on 22nd August 2016 when he made two speeches from London to his followers in Karachi.
Altaf Hussain had been charged with two counts of encouraging terrorism contrary to section 1(2) of the Terrorism Act 2006.
These relate to two speeches Hussain made on 22n August – first in the morning UK Time and second in the afternoon UK Time – in which he had been alleged by the Crown to have published speeches to crowds “gathered in Karachi, Pakistan the contents of which were likely to be understood by some or all of the members of the public to whom they were published as a direct or indirect encouragement to them to the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism and, at the time he published them, intended them to be so encouraged, or was reckless as to whether they would be so encouraged”.
The CPS had alleged that Altaf Hussain had asked his followers to attack the offices of Geo, ARY and Samaa and shut down the transmission of Geo and other channels for not publishing his pictures, videos and statements after being banned by the Lahore High Court.
Geo and Jang newspaper’s name came up in the proceedings repeatedly as Altaf Hussain mentioned in his speeches that Geo and other channels should be questioned and held accountable for not airing his speeches.
The prosecution had alleged that Altaf Hussain urged violence in his morning speech and asked his followers to bring out DG Rangers Bilal Akbar from the Rangers HQ and also asked his followers to be prepared for violent acts.
The prosecution said that the actual violence took place when Hussain made speech in the afternoon to the hunger strike camp of his party set outside the Karachi Press Club from where the MQM followers marched towards offices of television channels and violence took place outside ARY’s office where one MQM worker died, several people were injured and vehicle were put on fire.
The prosecution presented Brighton University teacher Dr Nichola Khan as its main expert witness on Karachi and MQM’s politics. She told the court that MQM was a victim of the state violence and there was no doubt that Altaf Hussain’s followers were killed, kidnapped, disappeared and tortured and that the law enforcement agencies operated with impunity and were involved in human rights violations.
She also told the court that in turn the MQM was also involved in violence and maintained a militant wing which was never publicly owned and accepted by the party leadership.
After the prosecution case was over, the MQM leader decided not to stand in the witness box for cross-examination by the prosecution. The prosecution told the jury that Altaf Hussain did not “answer, apologise, explain” his innocence or give answers to obvious questions because he doesn’t “doesn’t have an answer”.
Altaf Hussain’s lawyer Rupert Bowers QC had told the jury that it didn’t make sense that Altaf would stand in the dock over events which took place six years ago. He stressed to the jury that Altaf didn’t have anything to hide from the jury and the fact that he apologised on Twitter after his two speeches clearly demonstrated his regret about what happened following his speeches. He stressed, however, that Altaf Hussain’s apology should not be construed as an admission of guilt or wrongdoing.
This was the same stance Altaf Hussain adopted when he was interviewed by the police in 2019 when arrested before being chared. He had told the police that he did nothing wrong and stood by the words of his speech.
Mrs Justice May had given directions to the jury that while convicting Mr Hussain, the jury has to be completely satisfied that Hussain published a speech, that his statements were likely to be understood by a reasonable person hearing them of encouraging terrorism and that Mr Hussain either intended or was reckless as to whether members of the public would be encouraged to commit acts of violence after hearing those broadcast speeches.
The judge had directed that the prosecution does not have to prove that terrorist acts actually occurred. The judge directed that when considering the act of terrorism, the jury must consider the type of act, its design and purpose. To convict, the jury must be persuaded that the act was done to further a religious, political, ideological or racial cause, regardless of whether the cause was justified or not.
The prosecution’s case was that what Altaf Hussain asked of his MQM followers were acts of terrorism, designed to influence the government, and that they were done for a political objective and for that Mr Hussain encouraged violence and that the “whole tone, content and method used” in his speeches “was designed to get the crowd to do something”.
The defence lawyer Rupert Bowers QC had told Kingston Crown Court that Mr Hussain is not a terrorist and should not be convicted of two counts of encouraging terrorism.
The QC had said the jury has been asked by the prosecution not to measure Altaf’s case against cultural yardstick of Pakistan but the yardstick of the law of England and Wales is not same as the yardstick applies in Pakistani context.
He asked the jury to consider what qualifies as terrorism and it is the type of act, design behind the act and purpose of the act. He said the jury should not find Altaf Hussain guilty if they are not sure that he encouraged acts of violence against persons and properties and he will not be guilty if it falls short of “serious violence to persons/property”.
Rupert Bowers QC said it was the prosecution’s witness Dr Nichola Khan who told the court about the “endemic violence that exists in Pakistan, in Karachi” and that’s why the jury should, while applying the law to the actual facts of this case, should consider “what Hussain understood or intended, and what people understood”.
Rupert Bowers QC said the MQM has faced violence in Karachi, throughout and leading up to the 22nd of August 2016 and there was another push by the state against MQM and its followers and a ban was placed on Altaf Hussain. He told the jury that a ban of that kind would be inconceivable in the UK on any leader, as happened in the case of Altaf Hussain and this was confirmed by the prosecution expert witness.
He said that exaggeration happens in Pakistani political context and he knew that he cannot take on the Pakistan Army and didn’t even know if Bilal Akbar was inside the Rangers HQ or not.
Rupert Bowers QC had asked the jury not to convict Altaf Hussain because he “did nothing other than that he has always done in trying to represent an oppressed part of a population by organising what is axiomatically a peaceful protest”.
Altaf Hussain’s lawyer had concluded: “If violence ensued in the latter part of that day, you’ve seen it, he’s regretful of that. In my submission to you, he’s not a terrorist, and I ask you to acquit.”
The jury decided not to convict Altaf Hussain who arrived in the UK around three decades ago. He has never returned to Pakistan ever since but effectively controlled the biggest city of Pakistan until August 2016 when his party split over the same speech for which he has been convicted now. His supporters are not allowed to publicly carry out their activities in Karachi but, according to intelligence sources, his soft support remains in the city, amongst a significant section of the Muhajir communities.
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Altaf Hussain Photographer: Alexander Coggin for Bloomberg Businessweek
Accused of murder, money laundering, and terrorism, Altaf Hussain spent decades pulling Karachi’s strings from his British exile. Today he’s down, but not out.
The hunger strikers had been sitting for six hot days outside the Karachi Press Club, sheltering under a canvas tent as fans blew the sticky summer air. The Victorian sandstone pile in the heart of Pakistan’s commercial capital was an easy place to get media coverage, and some organization or other held a demonstration there almost every week. Few, however, could match the scale and reputation of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, or MQM, the secular political party whose adherents were camped out in August 2016. Since storming to power in the 1980s, the MQM and its leader, Altaf Hussain, had been a dominant force in Karachi, a metropolis of 20 million on the Arabian Sea. Everyone from CEOs to shopkeepers had felt its wrath, manifested in aggressively enforced strikes that Hussain called whenever a senior MQM figure was killed or arrested, or a political decision went against the party’s wishes. The ensuing turmoil could crash Karachi’s stock market and disrupt almost every aspect of daily life. It didn’t seem to matter that the MQM was as much a street gang as a political party, widely assumed to be funding its activities, and its leaders’ lifestyles, by extorting businesses and smuggling drugs. In Pakistan’s cutthroat political scene, it’s long held the power to make or break careers—most recently engineering the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan by pulling out of the former cricketer’s government.
But in the months leading up to the Press Club protest, the MQM had been under intense pressure. Pakistan’s army, the country’s most powerful institution, had locked up and allegedly “disappeared” dozens of MQM workers, part of a broad effort to make Karachi a safer environment for Chinese investment. A Lahore court had banned the press from publishing Hussain’s image or speeches, ruling that his anti-government tirades were a form of treason. For the first time in decades, the MQM appeared to be at risk of losing its grip.
Hussain was already in his early 60s, with a drooping face and ample belly, but the tent was decorated with portraits of him in his prime: a square-jawed young man with a bushy mustache and aviator sunglasses. He was clearly a source of inspiration to those present. In between cheers of “long live Altaf”, some pledged to lay down their lives for their bhai—the Urdu word for brother. That afternoon Hussain began delivering a nearly 100-minute tirade against the military and government. He reserved some of his harshest words for media outlets that refused to cover the MQM.
“Why,” he asked the audience, “have you not gone and terminated their broadcasts?”
Someone replied immediately. “We will smash their cameras right now, bhai. Give us the order.”
Around the corner, a mob soon broke through the reception doors of local channel ARY News and began trashing furniture, chasing down security guards and beating them with sticks. The pop of gunshots could be heard outside, and soon several vehicles were on fire. By the end of the day, one person was dead and more injured, including a policeman who was beaten unconscious. ARY and another station were off the air.
Hussain wasn’t around to witness the damage. He delivered his speech by phone from London, where he’s lived in exile for 30 years despite allegations ranging from money laundering to murder. For most of that time he’s remained in firm control of the MQM, directing its operations from the leafy suburb of Mill Hill. Pakistani officials and some British lawmakers have complained repeatedly about his presence, demanding the UK government act to prevent him from operating what they see as a ruthless militant force from its territory. But for the most part he’s been able to operate freely, remaining little known to the British public while commanding a huge network of lieutenants via round-the-clock phone calls. Even in London, long a home for political exiles of all persuasions, Hussain’s case is exceptional. Rather than plotting a return to power like many such emigres, he actually wielded it, holding one of the world’s largest cities—and, often, the balance of national power in Pakistan—in his thrall. “How can you run a huge city, or run a party that runs a huge city, sitting in London?” asked Anne Patterson, the US ambassador to Pakistan from 2007 to 2010. “It was still a question in my mind.”
This story of how Karachi’s most important power broker came to pull its strings from some 4,000 miles away is based on government documents, court evidence, and interviews with two dozen people involved, many of whom asked not to be identified because of legal sensitivities or concerns for their safety. Hussain has repeatedly denied engaging in criminal activity, and publicly apologized for his role in the TV station attacks, saying that his inflammatory speech was the product of mental distress.
There’s little doubt, however, that the event served a purpose for Hussain—just like other turmoil he’s fomented during his long career. “I wouldn’t call it violence,” Nadeem Nusrat, then one of Hussain’s top lieutenants, said in an interview soon afterward at the MQM’s grandly-named International Secretariat–a tatty office in Edgware, on London’s northern fringe. “It’s called realpolitik.”
Even by the standards of South Asian megacities, Karachi is a complicated place. Home to barely a million people in 1950, its population swelled with refugees from India, who fled their homes after its partition from what became the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and later millions of rural migrants. Growth quickly overwhelmed Karachi’s infrastructure, and there is no organized mass-transit system, no real city center, and few green spaces. An uncountable percentage of the population lives in slums.
Though he was born in Karachi in 1953, Hussain has always identified as a Mohajir—a term that refers to those, like his parents, who left India after partition. In Agra, about 140 miles south of Delhi, Hussain’s father had a prestigious job as a railway-station manager. In Karachi he could only find work in a textile mill, and then died when Hussain was just 13, leaving his 11 children dependent on Hussain’s brother’s civil-service salary as well as what their mother earned sewing clothes. Such downward mobility was common among Mohajirs, who were the target of discrimination by native residents of Sindh, the Pakistani state of which Karachi is the capital. Hussain was enraged by his community’s plight. He and a group of other Mohajir students founded the MQM in 1984, and Hussain gained a reputation for intense devotion to the cause. After one protest, when he was 26, he was jailed for nine months and given five lashes.
Religiously moderate and focused on reversing discriminatory measures, the MQM built a large following in Karachi, winning seats in the national and provincial parliaments. It didn’t hurt, according to UK diplomatic cables and two former Pakistani officials, that it received support from the military, which saw the party as a useful bulwark against other political factions. Although Hussain never stood for elected office, he was the inescapable face of the MQM, his portrait plastered all over the many areas it dominated.
From the beginning, the MQM’s operations went well beyond political organizing. As communal violence between ethnic Mohajirs, Sindhis, and Pashtuns worsened in the mid-1980s, Hussain urged his followers at a rally to “buy weapons and Kalashnikovs” for self-defense. “When they come to kill you,” he asked, “how will you protect yourselves?” The party set up weapons caches around Karachi, stocked with assault rifles for its large militant wing. Meanwhile, Hussain was solidifying his grip on the organization, lashing out at anyone who challenged his leadership. In a February 1991 cable, a British diplomat named Patrick Wogan described how, according to a high-level MQM contact, Hussain had the names of dissidents passed to police commanders, with instructions to “deal severely with them.” (Hussain denies ever giving instructions to injure or kill anyone).
Even the privileged came under direct threat. One elite Pakistani, who asked not to be identified due to fear of retribution, recalled angering the party by having the thieving manager of his family textile factory arrested, unaware the employee was an MQM donor. One afternoon in 1991, four men with guns forced themselves into the wealthy man’s car, driving him to a farmhouse on the edge of the city. There, they slashed him with razor blades and plunged a power drill into his legs. The MQM denied being behind the kidnapping, but when the victim’s family asked political contacts to lean on the party he was released, arriving home in clothes soaked with blood.
In 1992, with Karachi growing more unstable, the military sent a large force into the city, which soon entered open battles with MQM gunmen. Thousands would ultimately be killed, including Hussain’s nephew and eldest brother. Hussain left for the UK, claiming to have been targeted in a failed assassination attempt, and was granted asylum. From then on he would be running the MQM by phone and fax from a run-down semi-detached house, on a quiet street in Mill Hill, that was crammed with other exiles. At the other end of the line in Pakistan, his voice was blasted across rallies from huge speakers.
Four men with guns forced themselves into the wealthy man’s car, driving him to a farmhouse. They slashed him with razor blades and plunged a drill into his legs.
He sought assistance anywhere he could find it. Meeting with Wogan, one MQM official recalled to the Briton in disgust that Hussain had asked for help setting up a “clandestine meeting” with a senior diplomat from India, Pakistan’s archrival. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Hussain sent a formal letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair, offering to assist in the fight against Al Qaeda in exchange for protection from the ISI, Pakistan’s feared intelligence agency. He had received British citizenship earlier in 2001, prompting speculation in Pakistan and beyond that he was being rewarded for aiding the UK government. In Parliament, the left-wing MP George Galloway demanded to know why Hussain was “being allowed from a sofa in Edgware to conduct a terrorist campaign and a campaign of extortion of businesses and citizens” in Pakistan. According to two former British officials, the decision to accept his naturalization application was a processing mistake by immigration staff, rather than a reflection of his usefulness. Still, his passport was never revoked, and Hussain remains a UK national today. The Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office declined to comment, as did the Home Office, which handles immigration matters.
Despite the military’s attempts to snuff it out, the MQM retained a firm hold on much of Karachi–particularly after General Pervez Musharraf took control of Pakistan in a 1999 coup. A Mohajir himself, Musharraf took a hands-off approach to the MQM. But allegations that the party engaged in extortion and other illegal activities never stopped—and whatever their source, the MQM’s funds were flowing to London. Over the years it acquired at least seven British properties, including a grand, redbrick house for Hussain, purchased for more than 1 million pounds ($1.2 million) in 2001. He appeared untouchable, secure enough in London that the MQM could hold a glitzy 25th-anniversary bash there in 2009. “It was a colorful and happy evening,” one attendee recalled. “There were no cracks in the MQM then.”
On Sept. 16, 2010, a founding MQM member named Imran Farooq walked out of the Edgware tube station carrying a bag of groceries, heading home to his wife and two young sons. Farooq had gone into hiding during the 1990s military crackdowns, re-appearing in London just before the turn of the millennium. Initially Hussain greeted him like a long-lost brother, embracing Farooq tightly in front of cameras. But later court filings in Pakistan alleged that Hussain saw Farooq as a threat to his leadership. Their relationship soon withered, and Farooq was suspended from the MQM.
Two Pakistani men, Kashif Khan Kamran and Mohsin Ali Syed, were watching Farooq and followed him as he left the station. When he was just a few steps from his house, Syed rushed at Farooq, holding him in place while Kamran bludgeoned his head with a brick, and then stabbed at his chest and belly. The two men dropped Farooq’s body and went straight to Heathrow Airport, where they boarded a flight to Sri Lanka. En route, Kamran made a brief call to Karachi, which Syed would later describe to police. The job was done, Syed recalled him saying.
London has seen more than its share of violence apparently motivated by faraway political vendettas. The murder still crossed a line. Eventually, British police raided a series of properties linked to the MQM, finding hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash. In addition to piles of money, in Hussain’s home they discovered what appeared to be a shopping list of guns and other weaponry, denominated, curiously, in Indian rupees. According to people with knowledge of the investigation, as well as interview transcripts reviewed by Bloomberg News, Metropolitan Police detectives believed some of the funds might have come from the Research and Analysis Wing, the Indian intelligence service–allegations that would prove explosive when aired in Pakistan. (The Indian Prime Minister’s office, to which RAW reports, didn’t respond to a request for comment; the Met declined to comment). Even if that wasn’t true, the cash was clearly of uncertain origin, and the police opened a money-laundering investigation.
The financial probe never led to prosecution, and nor was Hussain charged in connection with Farooq’s death, prompting another MP, Naz Shah, to ask the Met commissioner at a hearing whether British law enforcement was “taking the matter seriously.” The commissioner demurred, saying only that investigations were ongoing.
But events in Pakistan were beginning to turn against Hussain. In 2013 China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, had unveiled the Belt and Road Initiative, a $1 trillion infrastructure plan across Asia and beyond. As a traditional Chinese ally, Pakistan was to receive as much as $60 billion. Spending all that money productively would require more stability in Karachi—and an MQM no longer able to bring commerce to a halt. The subsequent military crackdown, which prompted Hussain’s 2016 calls for his followers to attack TV studios, brought the party to a political nadir. Its top officials in Karachi renounced Hussain’s leadership, leaving it unclear who was really in charge: those on-the-ground bosses, or an emigré who still commanded considerable loyalty from the rank and file. The Karachi wing sought control of the party’s British assets, alleging in a lawsuit that Hussain had siphoned millions of pounds of MQM funds into his own pocket. (Hussain denied wrongdoing). Amid the infighting, the MQM won only seven seats in the 2018 national elections, its lowest total ever. Without input from Hussain, the estranged Karachi wing entered Imran Khan’s coalition government.
Meanwhile, Hussain was back on the radar of British police. In June 2019 officers burst into his house, arresting and then charging him for the “encouragement of terrorism” for his role in the TV station violence.
Late on an overcast afternoon in the summer of 2021, Hussain was waiting inside his Mill Hill property with a small phalanx of followers, wearing a dark suit and his trademark aviators. Arranging a meeting with him hadn’t been straightforward. He’d rescheduled repeatedly, citing the demands of his court cases as well as a bout of Covid-19. During the long postponements, Hussain’s aides had sent stacks of literature by mail: books on his early life, philosophy, and musings on love, along with pamphlets displaying bloody photos of alleged military atrocities against MQM members.
During the four-hour audience that followed, Hussain swung liberally between grievances, arguing that his legal troubles were caused by shadowy actors–above all the army and ISI. “For the past 30 years, I’m in exile,” he said, pausing for effect. “I’m paying the price.” The terrorism charge, police investigations, and lawsuit by his estranged comrades: he planned to fight them all to the end. “I will prefer to die in jail rather than to beg and surrender,” he declared.
Asked about the allegations of murder, extortion, and other crimes attributed over the years to the MQM, and to Hussain himself, he called for his followers to bring in a Koran. Two of them stepped forward to swear on the holy book. “Mr. Hussain never, ever uttered a single word to attack any locality, to loot, render, to order any person to kill,” said one of them, Qasim Ali Raza.
“Mr. Hussain never, ever uttered a single word to attack any locality, to loot, render, to order any person to kill.”
Hussain elaborated, rejecting every allegation in turn. Suggestions of money-laundering and funding from Indian intelligence were “all rubbish,” he said, while the cash found by police in his house was simply there for safekeeping. In particular, Hussain denied any responsibility for Farooq’s murder. The assassins had eventually been arrested in Pakistan, where they told investigators that MQM leaders had instructed them to commit the crime. Though they later recanted those statements, an Islamabad court ruled in 2020 that they’d been acting under orders from Hussain. “I don’t know them,” Hussain said sternly. Instead, he said Farooq’s death was the work of Pakistani intelligence, like so much else. (Pakistan’s military didn’t respond to requests for comment.)
Hussain’s denials came just a few weeks after another incident in which someone who crossed him found himself in harm’s way. Nusrat, Hussain’s former aide, had relocated to the US in 2017 after becoming disillusioned with Hussain’s leadership, setting up a separate Mohajir advocacy group. In July of last year he traveled to Houston to give a speech. On the way back to his hotel, Nusrat’s driver suddenly slammed on the brakes. A black sport-utility vehicle had pulled up. Someone inside fired several rounds before speeding away. Nusrat was unharmed. He wasn’t sure if the gunman missed, or if the shots were meant only to serve as a warning.
Hussain’s terrorism trial began in January at Kingston-upon-Thames Crown Court in southwest London. There, prosecutors played the jury enraged speeches Hussain had delivered before the TV station attacks, and presented transcripts of his agitated discussions with MQM comrades, captured by a system the party used to record phone calls. In his closing statements, prosecutor Mark Heywood argued the evidence showed that what Hussain “asked and commanded were acts of terrorism.” Hussain’s lawyer, Rupert Bowers, asked the jury to evaluate Hussain’s words with the “yardstick” of Pakistan’s violent political culture, pointing out that his client had apologized for what ensued. Hussain, he said, “intended no serious violence to come from his speeches at all.” After deliberating for three days, a majority of jurors agreed that Hussain wasn’t guilty. He emerged jubilantly from the courthouse, blowing kisses to the small crowd of supporters.
With another court battle just a month or so away—this time a civil suit brought by some of his erstwhile MQM allies—Hussain’s future still looks bleak. Riven by infighting and under pressure from the army, the party that once dominated the economic heart of Pakistan appears severely weakened. But the MQM has bounced back before. In April, Hussain’s London faction tentatively revived its operations in Karachi, naming two Pakistan-based leaders to serve as his lieutenants. A supporter is also petitioning a Pakistani court to remove the ban on his speeches.
Before climbing into a chauffeured Range Rover to drive home from court, Hussain made clear that he wasn’t finished trying to shape events in the city of his birth. “Inflation has skyrocketed,” he declared, with poor Pakistanis unable to afford fuel or electricity. “Today, I call upon all the institutions as well as the politicians of Pakistan that, for God’s sake, think about the poor people.”–with Ismail Dilawar
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...d-power-broker-controlled-karachi-from-london
Accused of murder, money laundering, and terrorism, Altaf Hussain spent decades pulling Karachi’s strings from his British exile. Today he’s down, but not out.
The hunger strikers had been sitting for six hot days outside the Karachi Press Club, sheltering under a canvas tent as fans blew the sticky summer air. The Victorian sandstone pile in the heart of Pakistan’s commercial capital was an easy place to get media coverage, and some organization or other held a demonstration there almost every week. Few, however, could match the scale and reputation of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, or MQM, the secular political party whose adherents were camped out in August 2016. Since storming to power in the 1980s, the MQM and its leader, Altaf Hussain, had been a dominant force in Karachi, a metropolis of 20 million on the Arabian Sea. Everyone from CEOs to shopkeepers had felt its wrath, manifested in aggressively enforced strikes that Hussain called whenever a senior MQM figure was killed or arrested, or a political decision went against the party’s wishes. The ensuing turmoil could crash Karachi’s stock market and disrupt almost every aspect of daily life. It didn’t seem to matter that the MQM was as much a street gang as a political party, widely assumed to be funding its activities, and its leaders’ lifestyles, by extorting businesses and smuggling drugs. In Pakistan’s cutthroat political scene, it’s long held the power to make or break careers—most recently engineering the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan by pulling out of the former cricketer’s government.
But in the months leading up to the Press Club protest, the MQM had been under intense pressure. Pakistan’s army, the country’s most powerful institution, had locked up and allegedly “disappeared” dozens of MQM workers, part of a broad effort to make Karachi a safer environment for Chinese investment. A Lahore court had banned the press from publishing Hussain’s image or speeches, ruling that his anti-government tirades were a form of treason. For the first time in decades, the MQM appeared to be at risk of losing its grip.
Hussain was already in his early 60s, with a drooping face and ample belly, but the tent was decorated with portraits of him in his prime: a square-jawed young man with a bushy mustache and aviator sunglasses. He was clearly a source of inspiration to those present. In between cheers of “long live Altaf”, some pledged to lay down their lives for their bhai—the Urdu word for brother. That afternoon Hussain began delivering a nearly 100-minute tirade against the military and government. He reserved some of his harshest words for media outlets that refused to cover the MQM.
“Why,” he asked the audience, “have you not gone and terminated their broadcasts?”
Someone replied immediately. “We will smash their cameras right now, bhai. Give us the order.”
Around the corner, a mob soon broke through the reception doors of local channel ARY News and began trashing furniture, chasing down security guards and beating them with sticks. The pop of gunshots could be heard outside, and soon several vehicles were on fire. By the end of the day, one person was dead and more injured, including a policeman who was beaten unconscious. ARY and another station were off the air.
Hussain wasn’t around to witness the damage. He delivered his speech by phone from London, where he’s lived in exile for 30 years despite allegations ranging from money laundering to murder. For most of that time he’s remained in firm control of the MQM, directing its operations from the leafy suburb of Mill Hill. Pakistani officials and some British lawmakers have complained repeatedly about his presence, demanding the UK government act to prevent him from operating what they see as a ruthless militant force from its territory. But for the most part he’s been able to operate freely, remaining little known to the British public while commanding a huge network of lieutenants via round-the-clock phone calls. Even in London, long a home for political exiles of all persuasions, Hussain’s case is exceptional. Rather than plotting a return to power like many such emigres, he actually wielded it, holding one of the world’s largest cities—and, often, the balance of national power in Pakistan—in his thrall. “How can you run a huge city, or run a party that runs a huge city, sitting in London?” asked Anne Patterson, the US ambassador to Pakistan from 2007 to 2010. “It was still a question in my mind.”
This story of how Karachi’s most important power broker came to pull its strings from some 4,000 miles away is based on government documents, court evidence, and interviews with two dozen people involved, many of whom asked not to be identified because of legal sensitivities or concerns for their safety. Hussain has repeatedly denied engaging in criminal activity, and publicly apologized for his role in the TV station attacks, saying that his inflammatory speech was the product of mental distress.
There’s little doubt, however, that the event served a purpose for Hussain—just like other turmoil he’s fomented during his long career. “I wouldn’t call it violence,” Nadeem Nusrat, then one of Hussain’s top lieutenants, said in an interview soon afterward at the MQM’s grandly-named International Secretariat–a tatty office in Edgware, on London’s northern fringe. “It’s called realpolitik.”
Even by the standards of South Asian megacities, Karachi is a complicated place. Home to barely a million people in 1950, its population swelled with refugees from India, who fled their homes after its partition from what became the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and later millions of rural migrants. Growth quickly overwhelmed Karachi’s infrastructure, and there is no organized mass-transit system, no real city center, and few green spaces. An uncountable percentage of the population lives in slums.
Though he was born in Karachi in 1953, Hussain has always identified as a Mohajir—a term that refers to those, like his parents, who left India after partition. In Agra, about 140 miles south of Delhi, Hussain’s father had a prestigious job as a railway-station manager. In Karachi he could only find work in a textile mill, and then died when Hussain was just 13, leaving his 11 children dependent on Hussain’s brother’s civil-service salary as well as what their mother earned sewing clothes. Such downward mobility was common among Mohajirs, who were the target of discrimination by native residents of Sindh, the Pakistani state of which Karachi is the capital. Hussain was enraged by his community’s plight. He and a group of other Mohajir students founded the MQM in 1984, and Hussain gained a reputation for intense devotion to the cause. After one protest, when he was 26, he was jailed for nine months and given five lashes.
Religiously moderate and focused on reversing discriminatory measures, the MQM built a large following in Karachi, winning seats in the national and provincial parliaments. It didn’t hurt, according to UK diplomatic cables and two former Pakistani officials, that it received support from the military, which saw the party as a useful bulwark against other political factions. Although Hussain never stood for elected office, he was the inescapable face of the MQM, his portrait plastered all over the many areas it dominated.
From the beginning, the MQM’s operations went well beyond political organizing. As communal violence between ethnic Mohajirs, Sindhis, and Pashtuns worsened in the mid-1980s, Hussain urged his followers at a rally to “buy weapons and Kalashnikovs” for self-defense. “When they come to kill you,” he asked, “how will you protect yourselves?” The party set up weapons caches around Karachi, stocked with assault rifles for its large militant wing. Meanwhile, Hussain was solidifying his grip on the organization, lashing out at anyone who challenged his leadership. In a February 1991 cable, a British diplomat named Patrick Wogan described how, according to a high-level MQM contact, Hussain had the names of dissidents passed to police commanders, with instructions to “deal severely with them.” (Hussain denies ever giving instructions to injure or kill anyone).
Even the privileged came under direct threat. One elite Pakistani, who asked not to be identified due to fear of retribution, recalled angering the party by having the thieving manager of his family textile factory arrested, unaware the employee was an MQM donor. One afternoon in 1991, four men with guns forced themselves into the wealthy man’s car, driving him to a farmhouse on the edge of the city. There, they slashed him with razor blades and plunged a power drill into his legs. The MQM denied being behind the kidnapping, but when the victim’s family asked political contacts to lean on the party he was released, arriving home in clothes soaked with blood.
In 1992, with Karachi growing more unstable, the military sent a large force into the city, which soon entered open battles with MQM gunmen. Thousands would ultimately be killed, including Hussain’s nephew and eldest brother. Hussain left for the UK, claiming to have been targeted in a failed assassination attempt, and was granted asylum. From then on he would be running the MQM by phone and fax from a run-down semi-detached house, on a quiet street in Mill Hill, that was crammed with other exiles. At the other end of the line in Pakistan, his voice was blasted across rallies from huge speakers.
Four men with guns forced themselves into the wealthy man’s car, driving him to a farmhouse. They slashed him with razor blades and plunged a drill into his legs.
He sought assistance anywhere he could find it. Meeting with Wogan, one MQM official recalled to the Briton in disgust that Hussain had asked for help setting up a “clandestine meeting” with a senior diplomat from India, Pakistan’s archrival. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Hussain sent a formal letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair, offering to assist in the fight against Al Qaeda in exchange for protection from the ISI, Pakistan’s feared intelligence agency. He had received British citizenship earlier in 2001, prompting speculation in Pakistan and beyond that he was being rewarded for aiding the UK government. In Parliament, the left-wing MP George Galloway demanded to know why Hussain was “being allowed from a sofa in Edgware to conduct a terrorist campaign and a campaign of extortion of businesses and citizens” in Pakistan. According to two former British officials, the decision to accept his naturalization application was a processing mistake by immigration staff, rather than a reflection of his usefulness. Still, his passport was never revoked, and Hussain remains a UK national today. The Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office declined to comment, as did the Home Office, which handles immigration matters.
Despite the military’s attempts to snuff it out, the MQM retained a firm hold on much of Karachi–particularly after General Pervez Musharraf took control of Pakistan in a 1999 coup. A Mohajir himself, Musharraf took a hands-off approach to the MQM. But allegations that the party engaged in extortion and other illegal activities never stopped—and whatever their source, the MQM’s funds were flowing to London. Over the years it acquired at least seven British properties, including a grand, redbrick house for Hussain, purchased for more than 1 million pounds ($1.2 million) in 2001. He appeared untouchable, secure enough in London that the MQM could hold a glitzy 25th-anniversary bash there in 2009. “It was a colorful and happy evening,” one attendee recalled. “There were no cracks in the MQM then.”
On Sept. 16, 2010, a founding MQM member named Imran Farooq walked out of the Edgware tube station carrying a bag of groceries, heading home to his wife and two young sons. Farooq had gone into hiding during the 1990s military crackdowns, re-appearing in London just before the turn of the millennium. Initially Hussain greeted him like a long-lost brother, embracing Farooq tightly in front of cameras. But later court filings in Pakistan alleged that Hussain saw Farooq as a threat to his leadership. Their relationship soon withered, and Farooq was suspended from the MQM.
Two Pakistani men, Kashif Khan Kamran and Mohsin Ali Syed, were watching Farooq and followed him as he left the station. When he was just a few steps from his house, Syed rushed at Farooq, holding him in place while Kamran bludgeoned his head with a brick, and then stabbed at his chest and belly. The two men dropped Farooq’s body and went straight to Heathrow Airport, where they boarded a flight to Sri Lanka. En route, Kamran made a brief call to Karachi, which Syed would later describe to police. The job was done, Syed recalled him saying.
London has seen more than its share of violence apparently motivated by faraway political vendettas. The murder still crossed a line. Eventually, British police raided a series of properties linked to the MQM, finding hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash. In addition to piles of money, in Hussain’s home they discovered what appeared to be a shopping list of guns and other weaponry, denominated, curiously, in Indian rupees. According to people with knowledge of the investigation, as well as interview transcripts reviewed by Bloomberg News, Metropolitan Police detectives believed some of the funds might have come from the Research and Analysis Wing, the Indian intelligence service–allegations that would prove explosive when aired in Pakistan. (The Indian Prime Minister’s office, to which RAW reports, didn’t respond to a request for comment; the Met declined to comment). Even if that wasn’t true, the cash was clearly of uncertain origin, and the police opened a money-laundering investigation.
The financial probe never led to prosecution, and nor was Hussain charged in connection with Farooq’s death, prompting another MP, Naz Shah, to ask the Met commissioner at a hearing whether British law enforcement was “taking the matter seriously.” The commissioner demurred, saying only that investigations were ongoing.
But events in Pakistan were beginning to turn against Hussain. In 2013 China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, had unveiled the Belt and Road Initiative, a $1 trillion infrastructure plan across Asia and beyond. As a traditional Chinese ally, Pakistan was to receive as much as $60 billion. Spending all that money productively would require more stability in Karachi—and an MQM no longer able to bring commerce to a halt. The subsequent military crackdown, which prompted Hussain’s 2016 calls for his followers to attack TV studios, brought the party to a political nadir. Its top officials in Karachi renounced Hussain’s leadership, leaving it unclear who was really in charge: those on-the-ground bosses, or an emigré who still commanded considerable loyalty from the rank and file. The Karachi wing sought control of the party’s British assets, alleging in a lawsuit that Hussain had siphoned millions of pounds of MQM funds into his own pocket. (Hussain denied wrongdoing). Amid the infighting, the MQM won only seven seats in the 2018 national elections, its lowest total ever. Without input from Hussain, the estranged Karachi wing entered Imran Khan’s coalition government.
Meanwhile, Hussain was back on the radar of British police. In June 2019 officers burst into his house, arresting and then charging him for the “encouragement of terrorism” for his role in the TV station violence.
Late on an overcast afternoon in the summer of 2021, Hussain was waiting inside his Mill Hill property with a small phalanx of followers, wearing a dark suit and his trademark aviators. Arranging a meeting with him hadn’t been straightforward. He’d rescheduled repeatedly, citing the demands of his court cases as well as a bout of Covid-19. During the long postponements, Hussain’s aides had sent stacks of literature by mail: books on his early life, philosophy, and musings on love, along with pamphlets displaying bloody photos of alleged military atrocities against MQM members.
During the four-hour audience that followed, Hussain swung liberally between grievances, arguing that his legal troubles were caused by shadowy actors–above all the army and ISI. “For the past 30 years, I’m in exile,” he said, pausing for effect. “I’m paying the price.” The terrorism charge, police investigations, and lawsuit by his estranged comrades: he planned to fight them all to the end. “I will prefer to die in jail rather than to beg and surrender,” he declared.
Asked about the allegations of murder, extortion, and other crimes attributed over the years to the MQM, and to Hussain himself, he called for his followers to bring in a Koran. Two of them stepped forward to swear on the holy book. “Mr. Hussain never, ever uttered a single word to attack any locality, to loot, render, to order any person to kill,” said one of them, Qasim Ali Raza.
“Mr. Hussain never, ever uttered a single word to attack any locality, to loot, render, to order any person to kill.”
Hussain elaborated, rejecting every allegation in turn. Suggestions of money-laundering and funding from Indian intelligence were “all rubbish,” he said, while the cash found by police in his house was simply there for safekeeping. In particular, Hussain denied any responsibility for Farooq’s murder. The assassins had eventually been arrested in Pakistan, where they told investigators that MQM leaders had instructed them to commit the crime. Though they later recanted those statements, an Islamabad court ruled in 2020 that they’d been acting under orders from Hussain. “I don’t know them,” Hussain said sternly. Instead, he said Farooq’s death was the work of Pakistani intelligence, like so much else. (Pakistan’s military didn’t respond to requests for comment.)
Hussain’s denials came just a few weeks after another incident in which someone who crossed him found himself in harm’s way. Nusrat, Hussain’s former aide, had relocated to the US in 2017 after becoming disillusioned with Hussain’s leadership, setting up a separate Mohajir advocacy group. In July of last year he traveled to Houston to give a speech. On the way back to his hotel, Nusrat’s driver suddenly slammed on the brakes. A black sport-utility vehicle had pulled up. Someone inside fired several rounds before speeding away. Nusrat was unharmed. He wasn’t sure if the gunman missed, or if the shots were meant only to serve as a warning.
Hussain’s terrorism trial began in January at Kingston-upon-Thames Crown Court in southwest London. There, prosecutors played the jury enraged speeches Hussain had delivered before the TV station attacks, and presented transcripts of his agitated discussions with MQM comrades, captured by a system the party used to record phone calls. In his closing statements, prosecutor Mark Heywood argued the evidence showed that what Hussain “asked and commanded were acts of terrorism.” Hussain’s lawyer, Rupert Bowers, asked the jury to evaluate Hussain’s words with the “yardstick” of Pakistan’s violent political culture, pointing out that his client had apologized for what ensued. Hussain, he said, “intended no serious violence to come from his speeches at all.” After deliberating for three days, a majority of jurors agreed that Hussain wasn’t guilty. He emerged jubilantly from the courthouse, blowing kisses to the small crowd of supporters.
With another court battle just a month or so away—this time a civil suit brought by some of his erstwhile MQM allies—Hussain’s future still looks bleak. Riven by infighting and under pressure from the army, the party that once dominated the economic heart of Pakistan appears severely weakened. But the MQM has bounced back before. In April, Hussain’s London faction tentatively revived its operations in Karachi, naming two Pakistan-based leaders to serve as his lieutenants. A supporter is also petitioning a Pakistani court to remove the ban on his speeches.
Before climbing into a chauffeured Range Rover to drive home from court, Hussain made clear that he wasn’t finished trying to shape events in the city of his birth. “Inflation has skyrocketed,” he declared, with poor Pakistanis unable to afford fuel or electricity. “Today, I call upon all the institutions as well as the politicians of Pakistan that, for God’s sake, think about the poor people.”–with Ismail Dilawar
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...d-power-broker-controlled-karachi-from-london
gazza619
Test Debutant
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2012
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I have lost faith in humanity.
There is no such thing as justice in this world!
There is no such thing as justice in this world!