(MENAFN- Arab Times) Pakistani authorities said they arrested two men on Thursday in connection with the murder of a dissident Pakistani politician in London five years ago. Mohsin Ali Syed, who left Britain just hours after Farooq's murder and is wanted by Scotland Yard, and Khalid Shamim were crossing into Pakistan's Baluchistan province from Afghanistan when they were arrested. Farooq was a founding member of a major political party in Pakistan, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which controls Karachi, Pakistan's richest city and home to 20 million people.
He has been accused of murder, torture and other serious crimes and was seeking asylum in London when he was stabbed and beaten to death on his way home from work. "The two men are MQM activists, one of them is directly involved in the Farooq stabbing, the other is said to be handler," a senior security official told Reuters. MQM was not immediately available for comment. A spokesman for the paramilitary Frontier Corps said, "The Interior Ministry has been informed about their arrest and the men will be handed over to the Federal Investigation Agency." MQM's leader Altaf Hussain has been living in self-imposed exile in Britain since 1992. He was arrested and questioned in connection with Farooq's murder last June, leading to protests that shut down Karachi.
No one has been charged with Farooq's murder but several MQM activists have been questioned and one of them was arrested on suspicion of money-laundering in April. Last year, Scotland Yard said they wanted to trace Ali and a second Pakistani man, Muhammad Kashif Khan Kamran, who also left Britain just hours after Farooq's murder. Kamran's whereabouts remain unknown. The arrests may raise further weaken MQM at a time of rising tensions between Karachi's civilian politicians and the powerful military.
The two sides have been trading corruption allegations for several days and this week the paramilitary Rangers raided a government office after accusing an unnamed political party of controlling mafias in the city. Meanwhile, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif temporarily suspended the use of the death penalty during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which began on Friday, the government said. Sharif ordered a pause to observe "the sanctity of the holy month," according to a statement released by the premier's office Thursday evening.
In December Sharif's government partially lifted Pakistan's moratorium on executions, specifically for terrorism-related cases, following the Taleban attack on a school in the city of Peshawar that left 150 people dead, mostly children. He later lifted the ban entirely, and since then about 150 inmates have been hanged in Pakistan. Pakistan's military has intensified a military campaign against local and foreign militants since the Taleban school attack in Peshawar. The military killed 20 suspected militants in airstrikes Friday in the northwestern Khyber tribal region, the army said. June 15 marked the first anniversary of a major ongoing military operation in the North Waziristan tribal region. The military says it has killed 2,763 militants since launching the operation in North Waziristan and elsewhere, while losing 347 soldiers.
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