How I used my impact as Britain’s first Muslim MP to snare race-hate killers
The astonishing story of how Mohammad Sarwar pledged to hunt down the gang who murdered schoolboy Kriss Donald and bring them 4,000 miles to face justice
visit to Pakistan I saw it as a journey of hope. After my second visit, that hope had turned to despair.
In two or three months the ground had shifted disastrously.
Kamal Zafar’s original ‘no strings attached’ assertion had now turned into its absolute opposite. He raised the issue of the absence of an extradition treaty and said it could be overcome, but only if a deal was done. He then proposed tit-for-tat exchanges of wanted criminals.
I was flabbergasted at the change. For more than a year this would remain Zafar’s position for the entire period of negotiations: ‘We give you yours, but only if you give us ours.’
There was to be a double blow in the shape of decisions handed down by the British High Commission. The position adopted by the British High Commissioner in Islamabad was essentially that the Kriss Donald case could not be allowed to rock the boat of British and Pakistani relations, which were at a sensitive stage.
An under-secretary at the High Commission told me in a meeting: ‘Mr Sarwar, you have to see the bigger picture in all of this. We cannot allow the case of your constituent to complicate much bigger, more significant negotiations.’
I told him that securing a deal on the Kriss Donald case would actually be a practical example of what could be done and could establish the benefit of such relations. The under-secretary retorted in his clipped English accent: ‘The bigger picture, Mr Sarwar. The bigger picture, I’m afraid…’
A frustrating stalemate beckoned as I returned to Glasgow with only bad news.
Early in November 2004, this was made even more clear to me at the funeral of Yasser Arafat. There was a military funeral behind closed doors in Cairo, where I again met Shaukat Aziz face to face. I raised the lack of progress on the case. The Prime Minister’s reply was to the effect that the lack of cooperation from the British authorities about requests for details of the suspects who might be hiding out in Pakistan made progress in apprehending them impossible, treaty or no treaty, deal or no deal.
The first trial proceeded in October 2004 with only two of the accused – Daanish Zahid, 20, and Zahid Mohammed also 20. I was weary.
But fears that these two would get off by blaming the other three proved unfounded. On November 18, 2004, the jury delivered guilty verdicts against both.
I told the media: ‘We will not leave any stone unturned to bring the other suspects to trial and justice.’
But to be honest, by this time I was beginning to wonder if that would ever come to pass. They were in hiding in Pakistan and it looked as if that was where they might remain.
FOllOWING the May 2005 election victory I attended an event in london. Among the guests was the then Cabinet Minister for the Interior of the Pakistan government, Aftab Sherpaio. I told him about the case.
‘You are knocking on the wrong doors. You should have come to see me before this. I’m in charge,’ he said. Immediately he gave me his two personal mobile numbers.
He said: ‘I promise we will not let you down. Come to Pakistan soon and we will get this thing sorted.’
Within a matter of days I was again on my way to Islamabad. When we touched down, I phoned Sherpaio from the airport. True to his word, he said: ‘Didn’t take you long, Sarwar Sahib!
‘Right, tomorrow at my office, 10 o’clock, and all the actors in this drama will be there. We’ll knock a few heads together.’
The next morning he told officials, including Secretary of the Interior Zafar: ‘This is not for the British Government. I want you to stop going on about exchanges of wanted men. We are doing it for our brother Sarwar Sahib and the Pakistani community in the UK. I don’t want any excuses. I want everything to be in place and agreed within one week.’
That can be the way of things in Pakistan. You have to find the right person with the right key to unlock the door. Within three or four weeks a warrant for the arrest of the three suspects had been issued, and just a few weeks later the message I had been waiting for arrived when Shaukat Javed of the IB (the equivalent of MI5) rang to say: ‘We have got the first one. Imran Shahid was arrested today in lahore.’
It would transpire that this was the result of a joint police operation between Strathclyde Police and their counterparts in lahore. Strathclyde police officers had provided the police in lahore with the British mobile phone numbers of those who fled. Eventually Imran Shahid used his, which allowed the Pakistani police to trace him to the relatively upmarket Shadman district of lahore. For two nights the police lay in wait. On the third
night, as Shahid walked up the stairs to his apartment, the police pounced.
First of all Shahid denied the murder and blamed his two accomplices, his brother, Zeeshan, and friend, Faisal Mustaq.
When pushed he said he had been involved, but that Kriss had to be ‘taken care of’ because he had molested a number of Muslim girls in the south side of Glasgow. Shahid’s final pitch was to offer more than £200,000 to Zubair Chattha as a bribe to allow him to escape.
When the police searched Imran Shahid’s flat, they found he was running a huge banking swindle from Lahore. Police also found false passports and a driving licence with Shahid’s ID photo on them.
The name on the documents was laughable – Enrique Soprano – adopted from the American gangster series. But Imran Shahid was no Godfather.
Months later at a dinner party in Lahore, I met the chief of police Irfan Mahmood. I told him I knew how the police tracked Imran Shahid but always wondered how they caught the other two – deep in the Punjab – so quickly after Shahid had been arrested in Lahore.
Irfan explained that gangsters in Pakistan, when treated to some police ‘hospitality’, can last weeks without divulging information.
‘This so-called Godfather of yours didn’t last beyond an hour of our generosity before he gave out the names, numbers and locations of the other two. I wish our gangsters were as “tough” as yours,’ he told me with an ironic laugh.
Zeeshan Shahid and Faisal Mustaq were hiding out in a house owned by a distant relative, in a remote village in the Punjab. The pair must have thought no one would find them there. They were wrong.
I have a vivid memory of TV pictures of the three as they were transferred from jail to the holding cells in Rawalpindi, the night before they left Pakistan. They were laughing and joking and posing for the TV cameras as though they hadn’t a care in the world.
The three stood trial at the High Court in Edinburgh in October 2006 – two and a half years after they murdered Kriss. The smiles were wiped off their faces when all three were given life sentences – Imran Shahid a 25-year minimum term, Zeeshan Shahid a 23-year minimum and Mushtaq receiving a recommended minimum of 22 years.
Getting them to court to face justice in Scotland is among the proudest achievements of my life and, as I have said, one of my greatest heartbreaks.
When I look back on that time it still seems to me like a miracle.
My Remarkable Journey is published by Birlinn, priced £20.
It still seems like a miracle