Sattar asks if there is a policy to arrest MQM workers

Says party had drawn a line after Altaf’s August 22 speech

KARACHI: Strongly reacting to the recent arrest of his party workers and leaders, the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM)-Pakistan chief Farooq Sattar has asked the establishment to tell them in plain words if it has drafted a policy of detention.



“If there is a policy to arrest [MQM workers and leaders] then I should also be arrested,” Sattar told a news conference on Friday.

“If you have decided to arrest then you will have to arrest all of us. Tell us the time and place and we will voluntarily surrender ourselves en bloc by gathering at the high court,” he said, while asking the establishment not to pick up people one by one. ‘We are even ready to close down our PIB Colony office,” the MQM-Pakistan chief added.



Referring to the MQM founder Altaf Hussain’s anti-Pakistan speech of August 22, Sattar said the MQM-Pakistan now wanted to proceed towards August 23, when the MQM-Pakistan dissociated itself from its London-based founder and party office in the UK.

“We drew a line on August 22. Now the establishment should not try to link us with that date as we want to move towards August 23,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 8^th, 2016.