KARACHI: Former MQM leader Mustafa Kamal on Sunday demanded the Muttahidda Qaumi Movement (MQM) workers and activists who are in prison for having indulged in crimes at the behest of the party should be offered a way-out.
“They may have committed crimes but we must look at who turned them into criminals,” he said while talking to media here, adding, “If amnesty packages are given to rebels in Balochistan, something must be done for these prisoners as well.”
Reacting to MQM claim that imprisoned party workers were tortured by Rangers, Kamal said it was a good sign that the MQM was at least accepting that its workers had been in jails.
Kamal said that it’s not one person but the whole family of a jailed worker that suffers.
To a question about Farooq Sattar’s claim that Rangers were forcing his party’s inmates to change their loyalties, Kamal refused to comment, calling the MQM senior leader ‘innocent and oppressed’. He, however, said that the jailer had already refuted the allegations levelled by the MQM leader.
Kamal said that FIA Director Shahid Hayat visited him in the day. “He has sought cooperation in the money laundering case against MQM chief,” he said, and added, “Shahid Hayat has asked us to share evidence of Altaf’s ties with RAW.”
Television footage showed Hayat arriving at Kamal’s residence in Karachi’s Clifton neighbourhood.
The development comes in the wake of Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan’s repeated invitations to Kamal for sharing evidence with the FIA against MQM leader about which the former mayor had talked in his recent press conferences.
Kamal also announced to hold the first-ever rally of his newly formed party in the second week of April. “Time will tell how big our first political gathering in Karachi is,” he said. “People are contacting us and all of us would make grand preparations to hold our party’s first public meeting,” he said. The rally would determine the future of Pakistani politics, he said, and appealed to sisters and mothers especially to heavily participate in the rally. A few days earlier, Kamal had disclosed the venue of his party’s public meeting without specifying the date. “We will hold the public rally at Bagh-e-Jinnah ground, which is located in the mausoleum of Quaid-e-Azam,” he had said.
