AS the latest developments indicate, it seems there has been some forward movement at last in the Dr Imran Farooq murder case. On Thursday, two men wanted in the senior MQM leader’s 2010 murder in London, were picked up from Chaman, the border town on the Afghan frontier, by security forces. The two suspects were reportedly arrested by the Frontier Corps when they tried to enter the country from Afghanistan while an FC official said they had been in that country for some time. This development adds a strange twist to the case, as it had earlier been suspected that two individuals involved in the murder were in the custody of Pakistani intelligence. Are the two suspects — Mohsin Ali and Khalid Shamim — arrested at the Afghan border the same men? Earlier this year, another suspect, Moazzam Ali, had been arrested from Karachi. He was said to have provided logistical support to Dr Farooq’s killers. The whereabouts of yet another key suspect, Kashif Khan Kamran, is still not known.

If the men arrested at Chaman are indeed the ones involved in the murder of Dr Farooq, then their capture would be a major breakthrough. However, several questions remain. An important one is, how did the suspects end up in Afghanistan, when it was being speculated earlier that they were in the custody of Pakistani intelligence, apparently whisked away from Karachi airport when one of the suspects arrived at the facility to pick up the two other suspects after Dr Farooq’s murder. These missing links need to be explained by the state. Overall, we hope that the capture of the men does indeed lead to the case being resolved and to punishment for those directly involved in the killing, as well as for those aiding and abetting them. The MQM — which has denied any links to the arrested men — should not have any qualms about pushing for the trial of the suspects so that the killers of the senior Muttahida leader are unmasked and punished.

Published in Dawn, June 20th, 2015

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