ISLAMABAD: Altaf Hussain, the founder of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), who lives in self-exile in London, has been found not guilty by a jury of encouraging acts of terrorism after making fiery speeches to followers in Pakistan’s financial capital Karachi.
The verdict was reached by a majority decision in London on Tuesday.
British police said in 2019 they had charged the London-based leader with a terrorism offense in connection with a speech delivered three years ago in which he was accused of urging a crowd of hunger strikers in Karachi to ransack media houses and storm the local headquarters of a military unit.
Two TV studios were soon after attacked and taken off air, while police officers were assaulted and injured, prosecutors said. One person was killed in the violence.
Rupert Bowers, a defense lawyer, sought to cast doubt over whether Hussain meant for his words to be taken literally that day. He urged jurors to judge the case “by the yardstick of Pakistan” and its “endemic violence,” Bloomberg reported.
“Mr. Hussain did nothing other than he has always done in trying to represent an oppressed part of the population while organizing what is axiomatically a peaceful protest by way of hunger strike,” Bowers said in his summing up. “If violence ensued in the latter part of that day he’s regretful of that — he’s not a terrorist.”
Fearing assassination, Hussain requested asylum in Britain in the 1990s and later gained British citizenship. But he ruled the port city of Karachi with an iron fist despite living thousands of miles away in London, able to close businesses and bring streets to a standstill with a single order.
But that ability has ebbed since 2013, when the military launched a crackdown in which the MQM says hundreds of its supporters have been arrested and killed in extrajudicial operations. Authorities deny the charge, saying they have targeted criminals and militants irrespective of political affiliations, and brought down crime rates considerably.
Hussain’s control over the party he founded in 1984 has also been undermined as loyalists led by former right-hand man Farooq Sattar announced in August 2016 the MQM would no longer be run from London but by politicians in Karachi.
The MQM, one of Pakistan’s biggest political parties, mostly comprises descendants of Muslim Urdu-speaking people who migrated to Pakistan from India around the time of the partition of India in 1947. The party is also accused of exercising influence through gangs engaged in racketeering, kidnappings for ransom and targeted killings in Karachi. The MQM denies the charges.