HYDERABAD: A brother of Qari Hashim alias Arif said on Friday that the Daniel Pearl kidnapping and murder case accused was not released from the Hyderabad central prison despite the acquittal order by an anti-terrorism court.

Syed Khalid Imran, a younger brother of Qari Hashim, visited the local press club on Friday evening and told journalists that he kept waiting outside the prison for the release of his brother but he was not handed over to him.

He said that his brother was falsely implicated in the Pearl murder case and he had earlier been detained in FIRs nominating unidentified suspects in Karachi.

He disclosed that his brother had gone missing in 1999-2000 after the Kargil episode and his family learnt that he had gone to Kashmir to take part in jihad. Later, the family came to know in 2005 that he was held in the US journalist murder case.

Contrary to the official version that Qari Hashim was arrested in Karachi, the brother said that he was arrested in Aug 2005 in Gujranwala from where he was shifted to Karachi where he was charge-sheeted in a case pertaining to the recovery of an unclaimed body found stuffed in a gunny bag.

He said that Asif Farooqui, a prosecution witness in the Pearl murder case, had clearly deposed in favour of his brother.
He said that despite the writ of release from the court, his brother was not released and it was feared that he would be handed over to some intelligence agency again.

Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2014