KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain said Thursday that a “new web of conspiracies” was being hatched to implicate him in various cases.
“I want to tell my sympathisers that a new web of conspiracy is being woven around me and various false allegations are being leveled,” said the MQM leader in a statement issued from his office in Edgeware, London.
“Not only is negative propaganda being done against me but false allegations are being used to implicate me in various cases.”
The statement comes a day after the BBC reported that UK prosecutors have asked Pakistan to trace two suspects believed to have been involved in the murder of senior MQM leader Dr Imran Farooq on Sept 16, 2010.
The report identified the suspects as Mohsin Ali Syed and Mohammed Kashif Khan Kamran, and said they are both believed to be in Pakistani custody but not under formal arrest.
The suspects reportedly boarded a plane to Sri Lanka from London's Heathrow airport on the same day the MQM leader was killed, said the report, and that Kashif Khan had come to England just days before the murder of Dr Farooq.
The BBC report further said that the visa forms of the two suspects were verified by a Karachi-based businessman named Moazzam Ali Khan, who allegedly had remained in continuous contact during 2010 with the 52-year old suspect Iftikhar Husain, a British citizen of Pakistani origin, arrested by London police in 2013.
“I want to inform the entire nation that I have never bowed down my head before forces of evil. I suffered imprisonments and saw death from very near but I continued my mission,” said Hussain. “I want to inform the public that I will never bow down my head before any international forces.”
Meanwhile, at an emergency press conference called at the party’s ‘Nine-Zero’ headquarters in Karachi, members of the MQM’s Coordination (Rabita) Committee defended the party chief and said a “vicious media trial” was being orchestrated against him.
Senator Farogh Nasim said that the BBC had raised questions against Altaf Hussain and the MQM, but had completely excluded from the documentary report in its Newsnight program his responses on money laundering allegations.
Nasim said the allegations raised in the documentary were baseless and the party would initiate legal proceedings against the British news organisation.