LONDON: A British Pakistani community group has questioned the government’s signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Pakistani government agreeing to look into an extradition request for former Pakistan finance minister Ishaq Dar, who is currently in London.At a press conference here, Barrister Abid Hussain of Community Leadership Foundation announced that a petition carrying around 4,000 signatures will be presented to Prime Minister Theresa May’s office as well several other officers including to cross-party parliamentarians in protest at Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s “barter deal”.He claimed Javid violated UK’s commitment to human rights and fair justice by signing a MoU with the Pakistani government and sending him back will mean “nothing more than a political trial, furtherpersecution and victimisation”. Hussain referred to Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Accountability Shahzad Akbar’s comments at a TV talk show, months before signing the MoU, in which he stated: “… In relation to the matter of Ishaq Dar, we need to get his extradition processed. We do not currently have an extradition treaty with Britain, however, it can be done on reciprocity basis.”Barrister Hussain said this statement “clearly indicates that Pakistan tried a barter transaction void of due judicial merit and UK’s high standards of justice, fair play and human rights”. He asked: “Why did the Home Secretary even entertain such a proposal from the Pakistan government? The Home Secretary should open up and be transparent and publish the details of the information he has been provided by the Pakistani regime on which he has based his actions and publish any legal advice sought and relied upon.”The petition, signed from across the UK, said as British citizens of Pakistani origin, they were concerned at the “anti-democratic actions of the current government engaged in a concerted campaign of political victimisation, media censorship, fake and bogus cases and politically motivated incarceration of opposing political factions within Pakistan”.It said the government is doing so to silence any opposition to it and detract from the government’s own negligence, incompetence, mismanagement and malpractices in the area of good governance.The petition told the 10 Downing Street the MoU was “a tarnish on our democratic institutions of government and is a cause for the reputational damage of the UK as a neutral and pro-democratic entity”.
06-05-2019, 09:24 AM
MoU for Dar?s extradition ?void of due judicial merit?
العرض العادي
