Interrogation in process: Khalid Shamim under 90-day detention, reveals FIA chief

Shamim is being investigated for his involvement in the target killing of Imran Farooq

KARACHI: Khalid Shamim is under 90-day preventive detention of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), which is interrogating him for his involvement in the 'target killing' of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement's Dr Imran Farooq in London, the agency's chief disclosed on Monday.

FIA director-general Shahid Hayat shared this information in a report submitted to the Sindh High Court, which was hearing a plea against Shamim's likely extradition to the United Kingdom for interrogation. Dr Farooq was stabbed to death near his Edgware residence on September 16, 2010.

Beena Khalid, the suspect's wife, had approached the court with a request to stop the authorities from extraditing her husband for interrogation abroad after the Frontier Corps declared Khalid's arrest four years after he went missing from Karachi. Shamim, an accountant of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board, went missing from Karachi's Malir locality on October 6, 2011, according to his wife.

During Monday's proceedings, the FIA chief said that the husband of the petitioner, namely Khalid Shamim, son of Rehmat Shamim, was arrested by the Frontier Corps while entering into Pakistan without valid legal travel documents. Shamim has been detained under the Section 11EEEE of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, he added.

"The accused, Khalid Shamim, was involved in the conspiracy, abatement and target killing of Dr Imran Farooq, a senior leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement in London, UK," claimed the director-general.

Using the powers conferred under Section 6 of the Protection of Pakistan Ordinance, the federal government issued an order on June 16 for the preventive detention of the accused by FIA, Islamabad, said Hayat, adding that he may be detained for up to 90 days under this law.

Responding to the judges' query regarding the suspect's meeting with his wife, the deputy attorney general maintained that the petitioner can approach the relevant FIA officer in Islamabad and request a meeting. A division bench, headed by Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, asked the petitioner to approach the head of the joint investigation team, Inam Ghani, and submit a request for a meeting with the detainee. The court also directed the JIT's head to entertain the petitioner's request for a meeting with her husband.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 7^th, 2015.