A year on: Imran Farooq’s killers still evade UK police

A year after Dr Imran Farooq was brutally murdered in London on September 16 last year, the British police are still no closer to unmasking his killers.

Dr Farooq, one of the founding members of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and its forerunner the All Pakistan Muhajir Student Organisation (APMSO) was born in June 14, 1960.

The veteran MQM leader held several posts in the MQM, serving as its first secretary-general and convener, besides being elected to the National Assembly and the party’s parliamentary leader in 1988 and 1990. He was regarded as one of the party’s main ideologues, responsible for the political education of its supporters. After the Pakistan Peoples Party-led government launched a crackdown on MQM in 1992, Dr Farooq, like other party leaders, went into hiding. Later, he escaped to England in 1999, claiming political asylum there. He got married in 2004. Dr Farooq, 50, is believed to have been attacked on his way home in Green Lane, Edgware.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 17^th, 2011.