British 'hitman' found guilty of plotting to kill Pakistani activist
- Published
Muhammad Gohir Khan was offered £100,000 to carry out the murder
A British "hitman" has been found guilty of conspiring to kill a Pakistani dissident in the Netherlands.
A court in London heard Muhammad Gohir Khan was offered £100,000 (about $134,000) to carry out the murder in Rotterdam last year.
However he failed to track his target down, and was arrested on his return to the UK.
Now a jury has given a unanimous guilty verdict of conspiracy to murder and he is set be sentenced in March.
The intended victim, Waqass Goraya, has told the BBC he is sure the Pakistani intelligence services were ultimately behind the plot and that it forms part of a wider crackdown on dissenting voices both inside and outside Pakistan.
Pakistani officials would not comment on the case.
Gohir Khan, from east London, had racked up debts of more than £200,000 whilst running a cargo company. He was working as a delivery driver for a supermarket, but reacted enthusiastically when he was contacted about a "job" in Europe by a contact in Pakistan.
Khan was captured on CCTV buying a knife in Rotterdam
Khan claimed in court that he initially did not know what the job entailed, but he used fishing analogies in a WhatsApp conversation with a middleman man named as Muzzamil who was to take 20% of the fee.
"Is it a deep sea fish or just tuna?" Khan asked. Muzzamil, who was also known as "Papa" because of his resemblance to cartoon character "Papa Smurf", replied, "just tuna, but not uk tuna, european tuna".
Their grim intent was made clear when Khan discussed needing a "tool" or gun for the job, whilst at another point Muzzamil wrote about the target: "It's not a SHARK… A little fish… Little knife / hook / worm with a string is enough."
The man they planned on killing was Waqass Goraya, a prominent social media activist and critic of the Pakistani military and government, living in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. He was abducted and tortured whilst visiting Pakistan in January 2017 by suspected members of the intelligence services, and told the BBC he was convinced they had now attempted to have him killed in Europe.
Waqass Goraya says someone has to stand up to the military in Pakistan
"They don't like being called out for enforced disappearances or their torture cells," he said, adding: "It shows their cowardice. They are scared of people talking. People who are unarmed, with nothing but a pen or keyboard. They are more scared of them than the people with guns."
Pakistan's powerful military did not respond to requests for comment, whilst the country's information minister refused to discuss the case.
Government officials claim there is no clampdown on freedom of speech in Pakistan and the army denies interfering in politics, but human rights groups have repeatedly raised concerns about a series of violent attacks in Pakistan on journalists and activists who accuse the military of manipulating the country's electoral system.
The threat to Pakistani dissidents extends to those outside the country too.
Ayesha Siddiqa is an academic who has written extensively about the Pakistani military. In January 2019 she received a visit and letter from police in Britain warning of "credible information" that her life was in danger if she travelled back to Pakistan.
Ayesha Siddiqa says she has a contract on her head, even though she is in the UK
Dr Siddiqa shared the letter with the BBC, and said her own inquiries had led her to find out, "there was a contract on my head given to some Afghan warlords to be eliminated on return to Pakistan… if the temperature was raised I could be targeted in the UK as well."
Like Mr Goraya, Dr Siddiqa told the BBC she believed the Pakistani intelligence services were behind the threat.
"I have no one else to suspect."
Three other Pakistanis living in the UK confirmed to the BBC they had contact with the police over the possibility of them being targeted in Britain.
One of them, Fazal Khan, is a lawyer whose 14 year-old son Sahibzada Umer Khan was amongst the victims of a massacre at a school in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar by militants in 2014.
Since then, he has filed numerous court petitions involving Pakistan's military authorities, most recently criticising them for their soft treatment of one notorious former militant leader, who was kept under "house arrest" before mysteriously escaping.
As a result of his activism Mr Khan has faced threats from extremists and, he believes, the security services. In July 2020 Mr Khan survived an assassination attempt in Pakistan and later fled to the UK.
Last April, British police warned him of a threat to his life, advising him to maintain a "low profile" and not to venture into public places.
Fazal Khan is now in the UK, saying he lives in fear of his life for speaking out
Mr Khan told the BBC two plainclothes officers gave him an "emergency police number" and said, "you are in our system, if you feel anything abnormal then give us a call and an armoured vehicle will arrive to rescue you".
The officers did not specify the exact nature of the threat, but Mr Khan believes it must be linked to the Pakistani security services, describing being forced to live "a life of fear".
Others elsewhere in Europe have also been warned by Western intelligence agencies, including Taha Siddiqui, a journalist who escaped an abduction attempt in Islamabad and now lives in France.
At Kingston Crown Court, the jury heard Gohir Khan and the middleman Muzzamil discussed the possibility of further "jobs" after killing Mr Goraya.
Waqass Goraya had been told in 2018 of threats to his life by the FBI. In February last year, before Gohir Khan had even travelled to the Netherlands, he was rushed out of his home in Rotterdam by Dutch intelligence agents and taken to a secure location.
The operation targeting him at times appeared amateur and poorly organised, with Khan bemoaning delays in the process as "dysfunctional". Meanwhile, Khan produced fake doctored receipts and invented a fictional "crew" accompanying him in order to try to extract more money for the hit.
Testifying in court, Khan, who was at times tearful, came across as a bumbling opportunist, describing for example how he crashed a car in Rotterdam within minutes of renting it as he wasn't used to driving on the right hand side of the road.
When attempting to bypass Covid travel restrictions in order to travel to the Netherlands in June 2021, Khan asked a contact to pretend to be his brother living there.
On arrival, however, he was questioned by a border official who called the "brother" on the phone and asked him how old Khan was in order to verify his identity. Unable to answer, Khan's "brother" hung up, and Khan was denied entry to the country.
A few days later, Khan made the trip for a second time and was finally able to reach Rotterdam. He purchased a 19-inch knife and staked out what he believed was Mr Goraya's home. However, he soon realised the address he had been provided with was wrong.
Muzzamil assured him that his "boss" had received a video of Mr Goraya at the address around six months earlier, but unable to locate him Khan returned to London. On leaving Rotterdam he was questioned by a Dutch border force officer about his trip.
Struggling for an answer, Khan replied that he had been "touristing", leading the officer to refer him to police in Britain. They arrested him and eventually found his message history with Muzzamil.
In court, Khan insisted he never planned to go ahead with the murder and simply wanted to extract money from Muzammil, telling police he only bought a knife in Rotterdam to cut bread and fruit with. The prosecution argued he fully intended to carry out the killing and the jury agreed, convicting him of conspiracy to murder.
The Pakistan-based "client" who had ordered the hit was never named in court, though Muzzamil referred to a "big boss" who gave a green light to the operation and who he had worked with for around 20 years.
Muzzamil's full identity has not been disclosed either, though he appears to be a British national living in Pakistan. Police officials said the case remains an "active investigation" and appealed for anyone with information about Muzammil to contact them.
Mr Goraya is urging the UK authorities to further investigate the case and all those involved.
"It should not stop here… They have to go after the people who transferred the money, who ordered the hit."
He has no doubt that trail will eventually lead to the same Pakistani intelligence services he accuses of torturing him five years ago. He, along with other campaigners, also want Swedish and Canadian officials to re-open investigations into the deaths of two Baloch dissidents in 2021, both of which were found not to be suspicious.
Some activists worry Britain's close diplomatic relationship and co-operation with the Pakistani authorities on counter-terrorism will lead them to play down the significance of the episode.
Mr Goraya, however, is determined, not to be silenced.
"Threats and intimidation don't work," he told the BBC. "It makes people resilient. It makes their voice louder."
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