KARACHI: Law enforcement agencies reportedly arrested on Saturday three people, including two teachers and a student political activist in a swift action near Karachi Press Club (KPC).
Karachi University faculty member Dr Riaz Ahmed and a former teacher Prof Mehar Afroze Murad were taken into custody when they were heading to KPC to hold a press conference for the release of Dr Hasan Zafar Arif.
Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM)-London spokesperson, Wasay Jalil, told The Express Tribune that these people were not part of the party and were holding the press conference on their own.
“Dr Arif has had an association of decades with these people [in personal capacity]. They worked together at the varsity,” he said, condemning the arrest and termed it tantamount to victimisation.
Dr Arif is a leader of MQM-London, currently in jail for allegedly facilitating and praising the “incendiary and hateful” speeches his party founder Altaf Hussain delivered on different occasions.
Meanwhile, the LEAs also reportedly took into custody an activist of democratic students federation, Naghma Iqtidar from near the Sindh Assembly building.
Earlier, a press conference scheduled at KPC for Thursday to “demand justice for Dr Arif” was cancelled at the eleventh hour.
Dr Ahmed, Asad Butt, vice-president for Sindh chapter of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and Prof Murad had given the call for the press conference. Butt had said the KPC management asked him to cancel the conference since the speakers “would have said something anti-state or anti-Pakistan.”
On the other hand, KPC secretary Maqsood Yousufi said that the club had not cancelled the press conference nor could it ask anyone to do so.
Prof Arif was picked up by the Rangers on October 22 last year from outside the KPC where he had come to address a press conference in connection with the ongoing arrests of MQM workers in the metropolis. Since then, he has remained incarcerated.—Agencies
