UK-Pakistan close working helps convict man for murder of Dr Imran Farooq in UK
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 Christian Turner 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.
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Contact: British High Commission, Islamabad; tel. 0300 500 5306
