Mir’s statement not part of record: London police

LONDON: Scotland Yard has said that it has examined the alleged Tariq Mir interview being circulated in media and has established that the papers cannot be “recognised as police documents”.
Scotland Yard made the statement after The News passed copies of the alleged Tariq Mir interview to the police in 2012 in which the former Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader confessed during the recorded police interview that the party received funding from India.
When asked by The News if the contents of the interview were also not genuine, the Scotland Yard refused to confirm or deny and stressed that it was “not prepared to discuss” the information contained in the document. When pressed further, it said that the police give interview copies, on request, to the defendants and their solicitors and it’s up to them keep these documents safe or release at any forum.
“The police don’t leak confidential documents to media. It’s up to individuals as to what they do with their documents,” it said.The refusal of the police to declare the transcript in the documents bogus or doctored means that questions will continue to be asked about the alleged comments made by Tariq Mir under caution.
The News has it on authority that Tariq Mir was indeed interviewed by Scotland Yard in 2012 in relation to Dr Imran Farooq murder case along with several other senior MQM figures including Altaf Hussain, Muhammad Anwar, Tariq Javed, Anees Advocate and others. The document in the circulation says that these interviews were conducted at the Edgware police station but The News has confirmation that these interviews were conducted at the Collindale police station, as disclosed on Talat Hussain’s Naya Pakistan on Saturday.
Speaking to The News, Barrister Zarif Khan, who has long experience of dealing with terrorism cases, said that on the face of the document it doesn’t look like “an official police station transcript”.
“But the font I’ve seen before and sometimes police officers will write a summary and disclose it to a solicitor for disclosure when interviewing another suspect. The fact that the police made no comments about the contents of the interview means that they don’t dispute the content but they dispute the document in terms of its format and how dates, location have been fiddled with and large parts of the interview have been redacted too,” he said.
He said it looks like that the police officer who has prepared it for the purposes of disclosure (and why it’s redacted) and it’s been handed to another solicitor hence why he has made certain comments i.e. inserted names on the document.
He said that Tariq Mir had not denied the contents of the documents which means that the controversy will go on. The MQM has said that it’s a victim of the “media trial” but it has steadfastly refused to make a comment on the allegations of RAW connection, as alleged in Tariq Mir’s reported interview. The MQM has said that it will not make a comment on these documents because Scotland Yard is holding investigation into many matters currently being discussed in the media.
Meanwhile, Sarfraz Merchant told The News that he had shared papers related to the ongoing MQM related money-laundering investigation with two “top leaders” of the MQM some months back. He believed that one of these leaders may have passed this evidence to media in Pakistan. Sarfraz Merchant spoke after a copy of the police interview briefing was circulated on social media.
Sarfraz Merchant said both the MQM leaders are no more in the MQM. “I intend to disclose the names of these people with proof either to the Metropolitan Police or Altaf Hussain, leader of the MQM,” said Sarfraz Merchant.