ATC reserves verdict in Dr Imran Farooq murder case

ISLAMABAD: An anti-terrorism court reserved judgment in the murder case of MQM leader Dr Imran Farooq, who was brutally killed nine years ago in London, Geo News reported.

The judgment was reserved after the completion of the trial and will be announced on June 18. FIA prosecutor Kh Imtiaz gave final arguments in the case Thursday. The FIA prosecutor said the evidence confirmed the earlier confessional statement of the suspects in the case.

“On one side place the confessional statement and at the other prosecution’s evidence, everything will appear linked to each other,” Imtiaz said. The CCTV footage from that time showed the suspects following Imran Farooq on the same evening of his murder, he told the court. The prosecutor said on the same date, the eyewitnesses saw the suspects near the house of the slain MQM leader. “The same evening, the suspects left for Sri Lanka from the UK,” the prosecutor told the court.

In February, a team of Scotland Yard officers arrived in Islamabad for a week to facilitate the trial taking place in both London and Pakistan after the UK and Pakistan decided to cooperate and the UK sent the entire murder case file to Pakistan for the trial of the murder plotters. Last year, Pakistan’s lawyer in the UK for the murder case, Toby Cadman, said Britain handed “compelling evidence” to Islamabad.

MQM leader’s wife, Shumaila Farooq, was also interviewed from London during the lengthy trial. She read out her statement on what happened on September 16, 2010, when her husband was stabbed to death outside his home in Edgware. The three accused - who include Mohsin Ali Syed, Moazzam Ali Khan and Khalid Shamim - are in police custody.