DESPARDES — The Islamabad High Court has stopped a trial court from further proceedings in the Imran Farooq murder case, and issued notices to the murder suspects.
Three main suspects in the murder case are Khalid Shamim, Syed Mohsin Ali and Moazzam Ali– all of them in Adiala Jail — they were indicted by the anti-terrorism court in May last year.
Iftikhar Hassan and Mohammad Anwar are alleged accomplices in the murder case.
MQM founder Altaf Hussain–a British-Pakistani dual national is accused of ordering the murder of his close aide– a charge he vehemently denies. Earlier this month, London police took Altaf in custody on charges of hate speech in 2016, He was later released on one month bail that expires in mid-July.
One of the suspects Shamim confessed to Farooq’s murder and said it was a ‘birthday gift’ for the MQM founder, while another accused Mohsin Ali stated he took part in the crime because he was promised a position in MQM’s Secretariat in the British capital.
Last month, FIA informed an anti-terrorism court that Britain is willing to share with them evidence related to Dr. Farooq’s murder under the mutual legal assistance (MLA) request.
However, British authorities informed Pakistani officials that they would neither hand over the accused nor the evidence to them as the country was opposed to death penalty for murder under the Pakistani law.
Dr Farooq, a leader of the MQM, and a close confidante of its self-exiled London-based founder of the Karachi-based political party, was brutally murdered in 2010 near his London residence.
Earlier in March, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) haf informed an anti-terrorism court (ATC) that all evidences in the murder case of Dr. Farooq had been collected.
During the course of proceedings then, the FIA had presented all the available evidences before the court and had said they decided to record testimonies of the suspects involved in the murder case.
FIA would provide a questioner to the suspects Khalid Shameem, Mohsin Ali and Moazzam Ali in April and would record their statements under section 342 thereafter.
Farooq, a founding member of the MQM, was killed in a knife attack in Edgware, north-west London in September 2010. He had claimed asylum in Britain in 1999. He had twice been elected Member of Parliament in Pakistan.
