A recent history of BBC reportage on MQM
June 24, 2015
After the BBC released its latest report the MQM rejected the allegations as baseless and termed the reportage to be a “table story”. However the BBC claimed it reached out to the MQM with questions but received no response from the party.
The BBC report claims it was informed by Pakistani officials that MQM militants had received 'explosives, weapons and sabotage' training in India. The Indian government dismissed the BBC allegations as ‘completely baseless’.
The latest BBC report is not the first on the Pakistani political party. In 2013 an episode of ‘Newsnight’ focused on the investigation being conducted by the London Metropolitan Police in connection with the murder of an MQM leader Dr. Imran Farooq murdered in London in 2010. The brief documentary created such a backlash that a comprehensive article by Owen Bennett Jones following the story was not published on its website. At the time a BBC spokesman rubbished the notion that the decision not to carry the story on the web was taken under any kind of pressure.
In January 2014 another ‘Newsnight’ edition of the BBC was condemned by the MQM. The program had highlighted that the British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had asked Pakistan to trace and identify two men suspected of assassinating MQM leader Dr. Imran Farooq in September 2010.
The two men were identified in the January 2014 BBC report as Mohsin Ali Syed and Mohammed Kashif Khan Kamran. It was rumoured in early 2014 that the two men were in custody of Pakistani authorities, a year later their arrest was officially confirmed.
The January 2014 report was at the time termed as “slanderous” by MQM’s Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui who said the report was “mischievously manipulated to soil MQM's image.” A point which was echoed by other MQM leaders, including Dr. Farooq Sattar, who termed it as an attempt to tarnish party chief Altaf Hussain’s image.
Senator Farogh Nasim who represented MQM in the 2014 program claimed in a press conference that the BBC "aired only what suited them to make it a hate-report. We will drag the corporation in the court of law for defamation".
The 2014 BBC report named a third person Muazzam Ali Khan, a freight company owner in Karachi who had helped the two suspected individuals to travel to London. In 2015 Muazzam Ali Khan is also in custody of Pakistani authorities for his involvement in aiding the men suspected of murdering the MQM leader Dr. Imran Farooq.
The MQM did write to the BBC expressing its reservations over the 2014 program and demanded that Barrister Farogh Nasim’s complete interview be aired unedited.
A year after the BBC program on the MQM, the party came in the crosshairs of a law enforcement crackdown against criminals. 27 suspects were rounded up in a raid at the party headquarters in March 2015 where a cache of weapons – both local and foreign made – were seized.
According to the paramilitary force spokesman Colonel Tahir, among those arrested were wanted criminals Faisal alias Faisal Mota, who was sentenced to death in the murder of Geo News journalist Wali Khan Babar as well as other ‘hardened criminals’ including Kamran alias Zeeshan, Farhan Shabir alias Mullah, Aamir, Nadir and Obaid alias K2.
