Altaf Hussain, the exiled leader of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), one of Pakistan’s biggest political parties, was arrested on Tuesday by Scotland Yard in London over his anti-state speeches, especially the one in 2016 in which he said Pakistan was the “epicentre of terrorism” and “a cancer for entire world”.
The Metropolitan Police would only confirm that a man in his 60s had been held in an investigation into speeches related to his MQM party. The MQM has dominated politics in Karachi for three decades because of its support in the densely populated working class neighbourhoods of Urdu-speaking Muhajirs, descendants of Muslims who migrated from India when Pakistan was created in 1947.
Hussain, 65, requested asylum in the 1990s and later gained UK citizenship. But he maintains a firm grip over the MQM and its main power base, the financial capital of Karachi. Following his arrest, Karachi city police chief Amir Ahmed Shaikh issued directions for stepped up patrolling and vigilance with anti-riot squads and equipment in Karachi.
Hussain was arrested Tuesday morning and taken to a south London police station. Fifteen officers took part in a dawn raid at his north London home, Geo News reported.
Altaf Hussain has been arrested in relation to the hate speech of 2016 in which he had urged his followers to take the law into their own hands, it said.
Hussain had delivered a fiery speech on August 22, 2016, after which party workers vandalised a media office in Karachi and chanted anti-Pakistan slogans.
The MQM supremo had not only raised slogans against Pakistan but also called the country “a cancer for entire world”. “Pakistan is cancer for entire world,” he had said.