DETECTIVES AND colleagues of a senior Pakistani opposition politician stabbed and beaten to death in a residential street in north London said last night they were working on the assumption it was a political assassination.
Imran Farooq, one of the co-founders of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), a powerful Karachi-based party run for almost two decades by a leadership exiled to the London suburb of Edgware, was found near his home. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.
The 50-year-old, who was married with two young sons, claimed UK asylum in 1999 with Altaf Hussain, the MQM’s leader, who has been outspoken in condemning Islamist militancy in Pakistan and the Islamabad government’s response to devastating floods.
Karachi went into mourning upon news of the killing, with streets deserted, schools and businesses shuttered and buses taken off the roads. Several vehicles were set alight and the city, Pakistan’s biggest, remained tense.
Scotland Yard refused to comment on a possible motive, but a source said homicide detectives had passed the investigation to the force’s counter-terrorism command, indicating a suspected political motive.
Mr Farooq had previously spent seven years in Pakistan on the run from criminal charges, while the MQM was engaged in a violent battle for control of Karachi. He remained a key party figure, close to Mr Hussain.
While the MQM leader is protected by private guards and rarely appears in public following death threats, colleagues said Mr Farooq never believed he was at risk and had played a lesser role in the party since the birth of his sons, now aged five and three.
Mohammad Anwar, a friend who worked with Mr Farooq on the MQM’s central committee said: “If someone took the time to watch him they would know what time he came home every night. It would be very straightforward. He didn’t take any precautions because he didn’t believe he was in danger. We all thought that we wouldn’t be under threat here,” he told the Guardian at MQM headquarters in an office block near Mr Farooq’s home. “Whoever did it could be telling him – and all of us – ‘If we can reach him we can reach you’.”
The MQM has long-standing rivalries with ethnic Pashtun and Sindhi parties in Karachi, and has experienced episodic internecine violence. – (Guardian service)