Anti-Islam film protests: Chair-stealing teens netted but real arsonists slip away

The police are struggling to catch and indict the trouble-makers from Friday’s rioting.

KARACHI: A boy, barely 16, crouched on the ground and wiped his eyes the best that he could with a shackle on one arm.

He is one of the three dozen suspects who were rounded up by the police in the aftermath of the September 21 riots in Karachi against the anti-Islam film. Six cinemas, banks and restaurants were burnt and looted that Friday.

The suspects were shuttled to court in police vans and a Civic car on Thursday. They sat around the Anti-Terrorism Courts in the morning, waiting to hear how much longer they would be kept in police custody.

The Anti-Terrorism Court III handed over for further questioning 36 suspects - 27 from the Boat Basin police station and another nine from the Civil Lines police station. They will remain in police custody till October 3 and will be presented in court the next day. This is a continuation of their remand that ended September 26.

The investigating officers, lawyers and the suspects have entirely different tales to tell, but there’s one thing that they agree on: the juveniles in custody are perhaps the worst-hit of them all.

As the boy cried, the Civil Lines police officers who brought him to court gave him a good dose of good-cop bad-cop moralising. “This is a terrorism case. You’ll be sent to jail, you know. They salute you with slaps there. We’re not even touching you, you’ve been given biryani, and you were brought here in an air-conditioned car. These children have wasted their parents’ money and their education, for what? A chair? You’re like our own children, this isn’t easy to watch. But other children should learn a lesson from this.”

Many suspects were picked up for buying the furniture and equipment that was looted from offices during the rioting. “I got a chair for Rs200 at PIDC,” said the shackled boy, who studies at a school in Hijrat Colony. “My parents know what happened... I don’t know if I have a lawyer.” No non-governmental organisations appear to have surfaced for these special cases.

Another juvenile suspect was just a college student in his second year of intermediate pre-engineering studies. He was caught with one of the stolen chairs but he did not want to say where he had got it from. Officers said that the children were too scared to give the names of any of their neighbours who they knew took part in the free-for-all looting.

Despite his age, 26-year-old Mohammad Shakeel of Hijrat Colony also wept copiously. He said he was detained near PIDC but claims that he was picked up the next day. “I don’t know anything. They found these things in my house - trays - that they say were from a restaurant,” he said. “Someone must have thrown it on the roof.”

Of the nine suspects in custody of the Civil Lines police, at least five are juveniles. The others work at low-income jobs - some of them are craftsmen, others are barbers.

The police are under pressure. Mohammad Sami, the investigating officer at Civil Lines, said the Anti-Terrorism Court III judge had told him to “conduct a thorough investigation.” “[But] if there is no evidence, let the suspects go,” he quoted the judge as saying.

While the Civil Lines and Boat Basin officers are adamant that they are building a case, they admit key culprits haven’t been arrested. They have only been able to arrest the juveniles, who they are sympathetic towards. “We have let them meet their families,” Sami said. “They can sit there all day with them if they want.”

Television footage is hopefully going to yield some leads to help identify the rioters. But time is running out. In fact, according to a Civil Lines officer, “hundreds” of men have already disappeared from Hijrat Colony and Sultanabad. The police believe they have “fled to their villages” to avoid being detained.

Nailing a protester who turned violent is thus proving difficult. “The police are just trying to check the boxes,” scoffed lawyer Nasir Ahmed, who is representing one of the detained teenagers. “They don’t have a real case.”

He alleged that those who can afford to, are being let off, after paying the police.

Now that lawyers are picking apart the police case, they are quick to point out that the FIR at Civil Lines police station - which tackles the damage at PIDC - does not actually include robbery. If the suspects caught with stolen goods are not charged with robbery, then what will the police pin on them?

Boat Basin investigating officer Hameed Khan has had slightly better luck. They have custody of 27 suspects who were “on the front lines”. “We arrested them on the spot. They burned a branch of Allied Bank, they were involved in looting,” he said.

Now it is just a matter of proving it. The suspects scramble to tell their story. Among them is Khalid, who claims to work at Agha’s Supermarket’s warehouse. He says he was picked up in Clifton. The same story came from a Karachi Port Trust employee and a man who was detained with his son near the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Park and another suspect Asif, who was picked up from his house on September 22.

“I didn’t want to tell my father,” Asif hurriedly said. “After two days - in which I was beaten - I mentioned two friends because I wanted the police to tell them to inform my family. Instead, they brought them to jail.”

Another group of three, all from Hijrat Colony, said they were picked up when they were on a motorcycle. One is a second-year student at Aisha Bawany College. One of the men said he taught the fourth and fifth grades at a school in Hijrat Colony.

Every person interviewed claimed to have no affiliation with a religious or political group.

On the pavement opposite the court, a huddle of men who said they were related to some of the suspects, discussed what to do next. “My son, Waliullah, was picked up near the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Park. There wasn’t even any rioting there,” said Mohammad Rehman. “I have been living in Karachi for 35 years; I retired from the Pakistan Navy after 22 years of service. My son works in Machi Miani market... he had just gone out. We belong to the Jamaat-ul-Muslimeen, but our message is of God, nothing else.”

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2012.