A man has been convicted of murdering Dr Imran Farooq
in London ten years ago, thanks to the close co-operation of law
agencies in the UK and Pakistan.
The conviction came about after a ground-breaking piece of
collaboration between the UK and Pakistan, which allowed evidence
gathered by the Metropolitan Police to be shared with Pakistani
prosecutors and be presented as part of their case.
It ends an investigation into the death of Dr Farooq, a senior
figure within the Pakistani political party Muttahida Qaumi
Movement (MQM). He was was murdered on 16th September 2010 when,
after returning home from work, he was approached and brutally
and fatally attacked by two men armed with a brick and knives.
After a trial in Islamabad, Pakistani national Mohsin Ali Syed,
35 (15.05.1985), was found guilty of murder and conspiracy to
murder Dr Imran.
Muhammad Kashif Khan Kamran, 40 (6.7.1979), a Pakistani national
and the other individual who was identified by Met detectives as
being involved in the murder, was convicted in absentia of
murdering Dr Farooq.
Enquiries into the pair’s background later revealed that both
Syed and Kamran were connected to the MQM party, and confirmed
the investigation team’s suspicion that the murder had likely
been related to politics.
Dr CMG, British High
Commissioner to Pakistan, said:
Today’s conviction marks a team effort between law agencies in
the UK and Pakistan working together to get justice for the
murder of Dr Imran Farooq.
This ground-breaking legal collaboration, assisted by the
British High Commission, meant that evidence gathered by the
British police could be shared with Pakistani prosecutors and
used in the successful prosecution of Mohsin Ali Syed.
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A formal mutual legal assistance (MLA) request by Pakistan to
the UK was made in February 2019. This was followed by a
temporary change to Pakistani law which provided that the
death penalty would not be used in cases where evidence had
been transferred under MLA from a state where the death
penalty is prohibited. This was further supported by
assurances from the Pakistani authorities that the death
penalty would not be imposed in this case.
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In August 2019, the MLA request was accepted by UK
authorities and officers began the process of providing
relevant evidence from their investigation to the Pakistani
authorities to assist in their prosecution of Syed and
Kamran. The temporary change to Pakistani law and the
consequent provision of UK evidence in a Pakistani trial were
ground-breaking steps forward in legal cooperation between
the UK and Pakistan.
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The investigation into the murder of Dr Farooq, who was
killed in Edgware, North London, is the culmination of
painstaking work by detectives from the Met Police’s Counter
Terrorism Command, who sifted through thousands of hours of
CCTV, spoke with over 4,000 witnesses and collected more than
4,500 exhibits as part of the investigation.
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Initially, there was very little evidence for detectives to
use that would help identify the attackers. A small number of
witnesses had seen the attack, and provided descriptions of
the two men, but there was no CCTV near the house or close by
that showed the suspects and no immediate forensic evidence
available to help identify the attackers.
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Later investigations managed to trace the attackers via CCTV
at an ATM, and then to an address in North London which
linked both attackers. Further CCTV footage was then
uncovered.
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Detectives discovered days after the murder Syed and Kamran
had travelled on a flight from London to Colombo, Sri Lanka,
and then onto Karachi on 19th September.
