ISLAMABAD: An Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC), Islamabad on Thursday sentenced each of three accused in Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Dr Imran Farooq murder case to life imprisonment along with Rs1 million fine.
The verdict earlier reserved on May 21 was announced by the ATC Judge Shahrukh Arjumand. Imran Farooq was murdered 9 years back in London.
The court verdict stated that three accused including Khalid Shamim, Mohsin Ali and Moazzam Ali had performed distinctive role in the killing ordered by the MQM leader, Altaf Hussain.
According to verdict, "The chain of evidence connects each and every accused who has performed a distinctive role in completing the task. It is proved that Altaf Hussian ordered the killing of Dr Imran Farooq," stated the verdict.
"Two of his other senior party members based in London then communicated the orders to relevant persons based in Pakistan. Accused Moazzam Ali, another senior member, working at Nine Zero, the headquarters of MQM, along with accused Khalid Shamim engaged accused Syed Mohsin Ali and Kashif Khan Kamran for accomplishing the job.
The court verdict further stated that the two executors were properly facilitated who went with a sole purpose to London for committing the murder and as per preplanned conspiracy, an innocent person was brutally murdered.
The court also issued perpetual arrest warrants for those accused absconding in the case, including MQM founder Altaf Hussain, Iftikhar Hussain, Mohammad Anwar and Kashif Kamran.
Meanwhile, Dr Christian Turner CMG, British 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, assisted by the British High Commission, meant that evidence gathered by the British police could be shared with Pakistani prosecutors and used in the successful prosecution of Mohsin Ali Syed.
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 investigation into the murder of Dr Farooq, who was killed in Edgware, North London, is the culmination of painstaking work by detectives from the Met Police’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.
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.
Later investigations managed to trace the attackers via CCTV at an ATM, and then to an address in North London which linked both attackers. Further CCTV footage was then uncovered. Detectives discovered days after the murder Syed and Kamran had travelled on a flight from London to Colombo, Sri Lanka, and then onto Karachi on 19th September.