Personal appearance: Jittery Afaq informs SHC of threats, advice to leave country

MQM-H chairman rejects reconciliation with MQM.

KARACHI: At the first given opportunity, Afaq Ahmed, the chairman of the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM-Haqiqi) told the two benches of the High Court of Sindh of a serious threat to his life and the advice he has been given to leave the country or remain incarcerated.

Afaq was produced before Justice Maqbool Baqar for his bail request and before a division bench of Chief Justice Mushir Alam and Justice Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi on Friday. He told both of them that his life was in danger but he could not divulge the details or even say what he wanted to because “institutions would be endangered then”.

He said that he has been asked to leave Pakistan or remain incarcerated in prison. “Any lawyer who had the courage to defend me was assassinated,” he told the bench headed by the chief justice of the Sindh High Court.

“I was implicated in cases since 2007 and onwards just as I was about to be released,” he told Justice Maqbool Baqar.

While sitting in court and waiting for his bail hearing to resume, Afaq appeared to be on edge. He jumped when someone dropped a file and even people moving around him seemed to make him jittery. But at the same time, he also appeared to be strict with his workers and supporters and was seen asking his little known aides to herd them all away from the courtroom. When it came to giving these orders, he appeared to be assertive and in a commanding position.

To questions by reporters of television channels and newspapers, Afaq was, however, evasive but firm in his comments. “It is not proper to ask a prisoner where he will go after his release from prison,” he said.

He was asked about his stance on possibly reconciling and rejoining the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which is something his very own party’s (now former) general secretary Aamir Khan did. But here Afaq criticised both the MQM and the Pakistan Peoples Party. “The plunderers [PPP] are protecting the killers [MQM] and this policy of reconciliation is not in the interest of the country,” he remarked.

When asked about reconciliation with the MQM, the party from which he created a breakaway faction years ago, he said that his rivals did not have the courage to make him such an offer. He parried other questions by just shrugging his shoulders. “My hair may have turned grey but I am young and fit,” said the composed MQM-H chairman, who was otherwise visibly concerned about his security even though there was a heavy contingent of police protecting his every moment even in the courtroom.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 12^th,  2011.