ISLAMABAD: An anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Islamabad on Thursday reserved its verdict in the murder case of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Dr Imran Farooq who was assassinated in 2010 in London.
The bench will announce its verdict on June 18.
Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) prosecutor Khawaja Imtiaz Ahmed, while giving concluding arguments in the case, maintained sufficient evidence is available against MQM founder Altaf Hussain and Anwar Hussain, a London-based MQM leader, to prove their involvement in the murder.
The prosecutor added that the accused should be punished in accordance with the law.
“The court should order the confiscation of the movable and immovable properties of MQM’s founder in Pakistan,” he pleaded. To which the court replied that the order has already been given.
THE CASE:
Dr Farooq, a founding member of the MQM, was stabbed and bludgeoned to death near his apartment in Edgware town of north London in September 2010.
In 2015, the FIA registered a case against Altaf Hussain for allegedly ordering the murder while nominating 3 other accused – Khalid Shamim, Mohsin Ali and Moazzam Ali.
However, on May 13 the suspects retracted their confessional statements before ATC judge Shahrukh Arjumand and recorded their fresh statements at a hearing held at Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail.
The suspects decided not to present any witnesses for their defense.
A day earlier, counsels for the accused claimed that the alleged bank documents and attendance sheets of a United Kingdom university – presented by the FIA as evidence against the accused – are fake.
The counsel for Mohsin Ali said the FIA forced his client to confess the crime under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) Section 164. He said the FIA officials concocted the statement after taking a signature of the accused on a plain paper.
He said Dr Imran Farooq was assassinated in 2010 but the FIA registered a case five years later. “Dr Imran Farooq was himself an absconder. The state had announced a bounty on him and he had a number of enemies,” he said.
The counsel said the statement of Dr Farooq’s wife was also full of contradictions.
“In the statement that she gave before London Police, she accused MQM founder Altaf Hussain of the murder but in her statement submitted to the court she apparently retracted her claim,” he said.
He said his client Mohsin Ali had gone to London for higher education and has no connection with the murder. The counsel also pointed out that the sketch developed on the basis of an eyewitness account also does not match with his client.
The counsel for another accused Moazzam Ali said his client was a businessman who frequently travelled to England, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other countries for corporate dealings.
He said the FIA was trying to link the banking transaction of a businessman with the murder. He said Moazzam was part of the MQM but the association with a political party is not a crime.
