Pakistan’s MQM chief questioned by UK police over incendiary speeches

KARACHI: Altaf Hussain, the founder and leader of one of Pakistan’s major political parties, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), who lives in self-exile in London, was taken for questioning by London’s Metropolitan Police on Tuesday, his party has said.
Though the MQM did not specify what Hussain was being questioned about, a statement from London police, which did not name the MQM leader, said a man associated with the party was currently being investigated over a number of speeches, including one delivered in August 2016.
Hussain is known for his fiery addresses to his supporters in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest and wealthiest city, through a loudspeaker connected to a telephone in his London home. Hussain’s MQM party has been dominant in Karachi since the 1980s and the party leader’s hold on the southern port city was once so strong that he was capable of shutting down entire neighborhoods with one phone call.
Since 1992, Hussain has been living in self-imposed exile in Britain, where he is under investigation over the murder in 2010 of Imran Farooq, an MQM founding member, who was stabbed to death in London. He has also been questioned in the past over charges of money-laundering and hate speech. Hussain is also wanted in Pakistan in connection with a murder case.
“This morning Founder & Leader of MQM Mr. Altaf Hussain has been taken for an interview at a London police station,” the party said in a statement on Tuesday. “MQM is a democratic political party and has a firm faith on the British legal system. The Coordination Committee is in constant consultations with the team of lawyers and in this regard all legal measures will be taken according to UK law”
MQM leader Qasim Ali told Arab News that Hussain was currently being questioned, but did not give any more details.
The London metropolitan police said in a statement that a 60-year-old man had on Tuesday “been arrested in connection with an investigation into a number of speeches made by an individual associated with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in Pakistan.”
The investigation, which is being led by officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, “is focused on a speech broadcast in August 2016 by an individual associated with the MQM movement in Pakistan as well as other speeches previously broadcast by the same person,” the statement said.
The statement added that the man was arrested on suspicion of intentionally encouraging or assisting offenses contrary to Section 44 of the Serious Crime Act 2007, which reads:
“(1) A person commits an offense if — — (a) he does an act capable of encouraging or assisting the commission of an offense; and — (b) he intends to encourage or assist its commission.
“(2) But he is not to be taken to have intended to encourage or assist the commission of an offense merely because such encouragement or assistance was a foreseeable consequence of his act.”
“He was detained under PACE [Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984] and taken to a south London police station, where he currently remains in police custody,” the police statement added.