A court acquits all those accused of the death of a young man in a police operation in Pakistan

23 Jan. (EUROPA PRESS) –

An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan has acquitted on Monday all those accused of the murder of Naqibulá Mehsud, five years after he was shot in Karachi, a case that led to accusations of brutality by security forces.

The court has indicated that its ruling that the Prosecutor’s Office has not presented evidence to support the accusations against the suspects, among whom is the former superintendent of the Police Rao Anuar, as reported by the Pakistani television network Geo TV.

Activist and lawyer Yibran Nasir has criticized the ruling, speaking of a “travesty of justice”. “It is not a surprise in a system in which all the institutions rot like a corpse”, he has maintained in his account on the social network Twitter.

For his part, Anuar has denounced after the verdict that “false accusations” were presented against him and has highlighted that a total of 25 people were wrongly accused, while he has denounced that the agents killed a terrorist named Nasimulá.

“He was a wanted militiaman about whom notices were published, even in the newspapers,” he said, before opening the door on his return to office. “I would like to serve Karachi. I freed Karachi from many cruel people,” he stressed.

Mehsud was assassinated in January 2018 in disputed circumstances, amid allegations that officers had assassinated him and portrayed him as a suspected militant from the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) armed group — known as the Pakistani Taliban. .

The TTP itself released a statement later saying that Mehsud was not a member of the group or had ties to them and stressing that the claims to this effect were “unfounded.”

Likewise, Police data revealed in 2018 indicated that the unit headed by Anuar is responsible for the death of 444 people between 2011 and 2018, in a total of 745 “incidents” that were settled in all cases without casualties among the agents.

The murder of Mehsud also unleashed a wave of protests against the impunity with which the Police act, especially in the South Waziristan region (north), where the young man was born, where the Pashtun community denounced persecution by the authorities.