KARACHI: For a third consecutive day, another video statement regarding the interrogation of a high-profile inmate — this time belonging to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement — mysteriously made its way to the media on Friday in which the suspect implicated a former provincial lawmaker of the MQM in the 1998 Hakim Said murder case.

TV channels aired a video clip of suspect Minhaj Qazi, the security in charge of the MQM’s Nine Zero headquarters, who was arrested in February this year and Rangers detained him for 90 days for grilling.

He was also booked in the 1997 murder case of former Karachi Electric Supply Corporation chief Shahid Hamid.

Video clip mysteriously reached TV channels which aired the footage

The 37-second video clip showed suspect Qazi sitting on a chair and apparently talking to his investigators, who were not seen in the footage since the camera was trained only on the suspect.

“Tell us, what you know about Hakim Said’s murder,” asked someone at the place of interrogation.

“When this murder took place I was not in contact with the MQM,” suspect Qazi began. “But the information is... Zulfiqar Hyder and others were in Karachi at that time and they were found involved then. And Mehmood Siddiqui of the APMSO, who was then the chairman of APMSO [the students’ wing of the MQM] had some hand in it.”

When he paused, someone in the background asked about Shakir. Upon which, Qazi said, “Shakir Langra and Imran Pasha were arrested... Nadeem Mota was arrested...one Aamir of Liaquatabad was also arrested.”

It was the third video statement leaked in as many days. On Wednesday and Thursday, TV channels aired two video statements, apparently recorded in Rangers’ custody, of former federal minister Dr Asim Hussain in which he was shown levelling allegations against former president Asif Ali Zardari and his foster brother Owais Muzaffar aka Tappi.

His counsel, Anwar Mansoor Khan, and the Pakistan Peoples Party blamed the Rangers for forcing and torturing Dr Asim in custody to extract statements of their choice.

“Clearly Rangers, who have kept Dr Asim in their custody, are responsible for torturing Dr Asim, extracting a statement from him and then leaking its video footage to TV channels,” a PPP spokesman had said.

Likewise, the MQM held a press conference on Friday and said that the video of Minhaj Qazi might have been made by Rangers when he was in their 90-day custody.

Senior MQM leader Dr Farooq Sattar said: “It is not difficult for them to use torture for extracting whatever statement they want from a person who is in their custody.”

“Amirullah was the prime accused in the Hakim Said murder case and he and all other MQM workers had been honourably acquitted on the orders of the high court and the Supreme Court,” he said.

Dr Sattar said that previously the video statements of Saulat Mirza and Khalid Shamim were aired by TV channels and this third video statement was also leaked just to malign the MQM and to create a space for “someone”.

He said that such video statements had no legal value and appealed to the Supreme Court to take notice of it.

He appealed to Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to take notice of the video statement and a conspiracy to implicate the MQM again in the Hakim Said murder case.

Meanwhile, an MQM spokesman has categorically rejected contents of a report published in a section of the press about bank accounts of the MQM and party chief Altaf Hussain.

The spokesman said that the number of bank accounts maintained by the party and its chief Altaf Hussain “has always been as would be expected by a common person”.

He said that the MQM lawyers were writing a letter to the Scotland Yard seeking an explanation as the news report claimed to have been obtained information from the Scotland Yard.

Dr Ijaz Fatima, the mother of Dr Asim, moved the Sindh High Court on Friday against the airing of her son’s video statement by TV channels.

She filed a petition against law-enforcement agencies, including Rangers, and asked the court to restrain them from releasing her son’s statements.

Published in Dawn, June 18th, 2016