My confessional statement was extracted forcibly, MQM’s alleged hitman tells SHC

A Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) activist who confessed to target killings of dozens of rival political parties’ activists before a judicial magistrate in 2016 has challenged his own confessional statement before the Sindh High Court.

Ahmed Saeed alias Bharam, who was also facing life imprisonment by an anti-terrorism court for murdering a political activist of the Mohajir Quami Movement-Haqiqi in the Ramswami area, submitted that he was kept in Rangers detention for 90 days in June 2016 and his confessional statement before the judicial magistrate was not voluntary.

He apprehended that he could be involved in criminal cases on the basis of his confessional statement from which he rescinded later on. He said that he could be implicated in dozens of criminal cases of arson, riots, murder and targeted killings, which were registered against unidentified persons at different police stations in the 25 years on the basis of his retracted confessional statement.

He requested the court to restrain the police and other law enforcement agencies from falsely implicating him in any further FIRs based on his retracted confessional statement before the judicial magistrate. He also sought declaration from the court that his confessional statement be declared involuntary as well as injunction to the police to submit details of pending cases against him before court of the law.

The counsel for the petitioner has sought time from the court to argue on the petition.

Saeed Bharam had earlier given startling disclosures about the MQM network with regard to killings of rival political parties’ opponents in his confessional statement.

Bharam, who was also convicted in the murder case of four American employees and a Pakistani driver of the Union Texas Pakistan but he was acquitted by the high court for lack of evidence, confessed to targeted killings of activists of rival political parties, including the Pakistan Peoples Party, Awami National Party, Sunni Tehreek and MQM-Haqiqi, and police personnel.

He stated that MQM leader Mohammad Anwar called him, Ajmal Pahari, Imtiaz Commando, Liqaut Qureshi in 2004 in Dubai and directed them to constitute a target killing team to kill anti-MQM people as per orders of MQM founder Altaf Hussain.

He also confessed an attack on the Sindh Secretariat in 1995, killings of 13 MQM-H workers in 1995, burning lawyers alive at their office in Tahir Plaza in April 2008, attacking a convoy of MQM-H leader Afaq Ahmed in Landhi in July 2012 with the assistance of the target killing team members.