KARACHI: Former Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader Hammad
Siddiqui, who was arrested in Dubai around two months ago, was handed
over to Pakistan by UAE authorities, a private news channel claimed on
Friday.
Quoting unnamed sources, Geo News said that the
“deportation” of Mr Siddiqui, a key suspect in the 2012 Baldia factory
fire in which over 250 labourers were killed, was conducted not through
standard operating procedures, but by mutual intelligence coordination
between Pakistan and the UAE.
It said that Interpol
handed over Mr Siddiqui to a “Pakistani intelligence agency last night”
and he was moved to Islamabad. However, Pakistani diplomatic officials
in the UAE maintained silence on the development, it added.
Hammad Siddiqui is a key suspect in Baldia factory fire case
Mr Siddiqui was a former in-charge of MQM’s Karachi Tanzeemi
Committee. He was expelled from the party in May 2013 by MQM founder
Altaf Hussain and after that he immediately left the country.
Pak
Sarzameen Party chairman Mustafa Kamal has been defending Mr Siddiqui
since he returned to Karachi on March 3, 2016. He and his party leaders
openly told media several times that Mr Siddiqui was not involved in the
Baldia factory fire.
Only on Thursday, Mr Kamal told
media that the Baldia factory fire was not an act of terrorism, but an
accident which was caused by alleged negligence of owners of the
ill-fated industrial unit.
He questioned as to why the
factory owners, Abdul Aziz Bhaila and his two sons, were living in
Canada and the United Kingdom and not appearing before the
Anti-Terrorism Court conducting the Baldia factory fire trial.
He
said that it was known to everyone that the fire erupted because of
short-circuit. “Ask the lawyer for the heirs of the victims of the
Baldia factory what they say about the incident,” he said.