SONYA FATAH

MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF CANADIAN

Top Pakistani court enters investigation

The Globe and Mail, Monday, June 25, 2007
SONYA FATAH

NEW DELHI — The Supreme Court of Pakistan has taken notice of the investigation into the death of a Canadian businesswoman, asking the Inspector General of Police and other officials to appear before the Chief Justice on Friday.

Pakistan’s former state minister, Muhammad Shahid Jamil Qureshi, arrested late last week after rejection of pretrial bail in connection with Kafila Siddiqui’s death, was moved from the local police station to a VIP wing at the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology after doctors said he is unwell.

The move has given police detectives more time to investigate Ms. Siddiqui’s death, as it has delayed the four-day police remand ordered by the judge.

Meanwhile, Ms. Siddiqui’s husband, Salman Qaiser, is in Karachi finalizing permission for an exhumation of his wife’s body and a second autopsy.

Ms. Siddiqui’s death remains shrouded in mystery more than a week after the minister brought her body to a leading government hospital.

Mr. Qureshi’s arrest is among the most high-profile arrests in recent Pakistani history. At the time of Ms. Siddiqui’s death, he was a sitting minister and a member of the Pakistan Muslim League, the current governing party.

Mr. Qureshi submitted his resignation, which was accepted by President Pervez Musharraf a day before the session judge dismissed the former minister’s bail plea.

In his argument before the additional sessions judge in Islamabad on Friday, the lawyer for Ms. Siddiqui’s family, Zaheeruddin Babar, alleged that the medical legal report, or the MLR, issued by the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences was prepared under pressure after Mr. Qureshi, a sitting minister at the time, used his influence.

A series of medial examinations have failed to determine the cause of death. The reports indicate that Ms. Siddiqui was in good health and that all her organs were healthy at the time of death.

A chemical examiner’s report stated that there was no poison found in Ms. Siddiqui’s vomit. Samples of blood found on her clothes have been forwarded to a serologist for further examination.

Mr. Babar told the judge that the Mr. Qureshi’s brother, a senior superintendent with Punjab police, had influenced the outcome of the chemical examiner’s report, which was sent to Lahore.

Mr. Babar also argued that the postmortem report omitted details imperative to the case, such as bruises on Ms. Siddiqui’s forehead, and that police gave the judge a photograph of Ms. Siddiqui’s bruised forehead as evidence.

A senior doctor at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences agreed that the postmortem had not been properly carried out.

“The doctors were told that the report should state that Kafila’s condition was normal,” he said.

The postmortem, he said, was a hurried affair. No blood, hair or urine samples were sent for further examination. And the report did not mention the bruises he noticed on Ms. Siddiqui’s face.

Mr. Qureshi, who has been booked under Sections 344 and 346 of the Pakistani penal code for illegal confinement, is alleged to have held her against her will.

Popularity: 3% [?]

IN BRIEF
Bail extension denied for Pakistani minister
The Globe and Mail, Saturday, June 23, 2007
Sonya Fatah

Islamabad — The former Pakistani government minister charged in the death of a Canadian woman was denied an extension of his bail yesterday at a court hearing in Islamabad, and was taken away in handcuffs. “He has been arrested and remanded into police custody for four days,” a senior Islamabad administration official said.

Muhammad Shahid Jamil Qureshi has been charged in connection with the death of businesswoman Kafila Siddiqui. He says she died of natural causes. Her brothers have filed a complaint with police, accusing Mr. Qureshi of confining her against her will at a house where they had both been staying.

Popularity: 3% [?]

THE DEATH OF KAFILA SIDDIQUI
Witness statements, phone and road records likely to figure in trial

The Globe and Mail, Tuesday, June 19, 2007
SONYA FATAH AND OMAR EL AKKAD

NEW DELHI, TORONTO — A former Pakistani cabinet minister’s statements about the events leading up to the death of a Canadian businesswoman living in his home are clearly contradicted by testimony from his own domestic staff, police alleged yesterday as they presented the first detailed description of Kafila Siddiqui’s final hours.

Muhammad Shahid Jamil Qureshi, who, until his resignation a week ago, was Pakistan’s state minister for communications, was granted a bail extension of four days yesterday; he is charged in connection with Ms. Siddiqui’s death. However, two members of his domestic staff were remanded to police custody for two days. Investigators allege Mr. Qureshi’s cook and driver withheld information from police about Ms. Siddiqui’s whereabouts in the days leading up to her death earlier this month.

After conducting a series of interrogations, police say staff members at Mr. Qureshi’s home were aware Ms. Siddiqui was living in the residence, but they were not allowed to interact with her.

“They have all given statements that Ms. Siddiqui was held against her will,” said Islamabad Police Senior Superintendent Zafar Iqbal. “Their statements go against those given by the ex-minister.

“If need be, they will be asked to testify in court.”

Mr. Qureshi’s driver, Mohammad Ijaz, testified before a magistrate yesterday, giving the first eyewitness account of Ms. Siddiqui’s last moments on the night of June 9. Mr. Ijaz said the former minister left the house around 10 p.m., carrying Ms. Siddiqui in his arms. It was not clear whether she was unconscious or dead, Mr. Ijaz added.

According to Mr. Ijaz’s testimony, Mr. Qureshi said he would drive himself – something that was out of character for a minister accustomed to being chauffeured.

Mr. Qureshi’s own account of his departure from his residence is significantly different, according to police: He told investigators Ms. Siddiqui left the house on her feet, using him for support.

But police records show Mr. Qureshi did not take the 39-year-old Canadian to the hospital – one was located just five minutes away from his home. Instead, police allege, Mr. Qureshi got onto the Islamabad-Lahore Motorway, and planned to drive Ms. Siddiqui to her sister’s home in Lahore, more than 250 kilometres away.

Motorway records obtained by police show Mr. Qureshi entered the highway but drove for a little more than an hour before turning back and returning to Islamabad.

“We have proof and we have records from the highway, because they recorded the entry and exit time of the car,” Supt. Iqbal said.

During his journey to Lahore, Mr. Qureshi allegedly made a phone call to Ms. Siddiqui’s sister, informing her that he was bringing Ms. Siddiqui, who had suddenly fallen ill, to her home. When Ms. Siddiqui’s sister said she would instead come to Islamabad herself, police allege, Mr. Qureshi hung up.

Mr. Qureshi then dialled Ms. Siddiqui’s brother, Mustafa Qayyum, in Karachi, and informed him that his sister had died, police say.

Four hours after he initially left the house, Mr. Qureshi finally brought Ms. Siddiqui to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, the hospital located minutes away. She was declared dead on arrival.

In a statement to police, Mr. Qureshi’s cook said he was told to prepare two meals a day for Ms. Siddiqui, but that the meals were taken to her by the former minister. Ten days prior to her death, the cook said, he was asked to prepare only one meal a day for Ms. Siddiqui.

Results of chemical tests to determine the cause of Ms. Siddiqui’s death are being examined in a laboratory in Lahore and are expected to be made public in a few days.

Last Wednesday, police added another charge against Mr. Qureshi, which describes a criminal offence similar to manslaughter. If convicted, Mr. Qureshi could face up to 14 years in jail. Previously, he had been charged with illegal confinement.

Popularity: 3% [?]

SONYA FATAH AND OMAR EL AKKAD
From Saturday’s Globe and Mail
June 16, 2007

NEW DELHI, TORONTO — The husband of Canadian businesswoman Kafila Siddiqui, who died mysteriously last week while living in the home of a Pakistani government minister, is calling for an independent Canadian medical board to conduct a second autopsy in the hope of determining the cause of his wife’s death.

In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Salman Qaiser, Ms. Siddiqui’s husband, also charged that the current investigation into Ms. Siddiqui’s death has been marred by missing blood samples and doctored evidence.

The minister, Muhammad Shahid Jamil Qureshi, resigned his post shortly after Ms. Siddiqui’s death, but denies any wrongdoing. This week the charges against him were upgraded from wrongful confinement to causing death, a charge that appears to be similar to the Canadian charge of manslaughter.

Mr. Qaiser believes his wife was about to terminate business projects of substantial value involving the minister and some large-scale investors.

Mr. Qaiser, and Ms. Siddiqui’s brother, Mustafa Qayyum, met with David Collins, the Canadian high commissioner in Islamabad, on Thursday. The high commissioner appeared to support bringing in an independent Canadian medical examiner if there was any concern about the current police investigation, Mr. Qaiser said.

But officials at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, where the forensic examination is taking place, were quick to dismiss allegations of tampering.

“This is total speculation,” Dr. Syed Fazle Hadi, the institute’s executive director, said. “No minister has called me. We are not going to be influenced by anyone.”

Mr. Qureshi took Ms. Siddiqui’s body to the institute in the early hours of last Saturday morning. She was pronounced dead upon arrival.

Between late April and Ms. Siddiqui’s death, several separate attempts were made to locate her. None proved successful.

Islamabad police Senior Superintendent Zafar Iqbal said officers responded to a request by Canada, made through Interpol, by going to the minister’s home. They were shooed away by the minister’s security personnel, who said no woman lived at the premises.

Canadian high commission officials in Islamabad – who were familiar with Ms. Siddiqui’s business and investment efforts and had invited her to events at the High Commission on several occasions – were also asked to locate Ms. Siddiqui.

“Staff from the Canadian consulate did visit the minister’s house,” a source at the high commission said. “We visited several times and were told on each occasion that this was the minister’s house and no woman lived there.”

A subsequent investigation by Pakistani police revealed that Ms. Siddiqui was indeed living at the home.

Asked why he did not make the trip earlier to Pakistan to find his missing wife, Mr. Qaiser said he was looking after his young son, Ali, and was pushing officials in Canada to help him locate Ms. Siddiqui.

Mr. Qaiser chased down local politicians, the RCMP, police and the office of the Foreign Affairs Department but struggled to get through layers of bureaucracy and indifference, he said.

Richmond Hill MP Bryon Wilfert brought up Ms. Siddiqui’s case during Question Period in Ottawa Friday, asking what the Minister of Foreign Affairs is doing to ensure justice is being served.

Deepak Obhrai, parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay, said the Privacy Act limited what he could say.

“However, I can assure the House that upon receiving the initial inquiry, our government took immediate action to locate Ms. Siddiqui, including personal visits by the embassy staff to her last known residence and place of work,” Mr. Obhrai said.

“In addition, the family were contacted to get other information and advice that included immediately filing a police report with the Pakistani authorities.”

For his part, Mr. Qaiser said he initially tried to avoid making things worse for his wife in Pakistan.

“I also did not want to make it very public,” he said.

Popularity: 8% [?]

The Globe and Mail, Wednesday, June 13, 2007
OMAR EL AKKAD AND SONYA FATAH

TORONTO and NEW DELHI — A Pakistani state minister resigned yesterday after he was named a suspect in the sudden death of Canadian businesswoman Kafila Siddiqui.

Muhammad Shahid Jamil Qureshi submitted his resignation as minister of state for communications after police confiscated a number of items from his home in a leafy Islamabad neighbourhood on Monday night. A police search of the home also exposed more inconsistencies in the troubling case of Ms. Siddiqui’s death.

Mr. Qureshi has not been arrested, but he has been placed on Pakistan’s exit control list to prevent him from fleeing the country.

Pakistani authorities had received a request from the Canadian government via Interpol, seeking information about Ms. Siddiqui’s whereabouts. A Pakistani Interior Ministry official said that police had gone to the minister’s house at the time, but were told that he was living there alone. However, subsequent police interrogations with 12 members of Mr. Qureshi’s domestic staff revealed that Ms. Siddiqui did reside in the house.

Staff at Mr. Qureshi’s residence told police that while they were aware of Ms. Siddiqui’s presence, they hardly interacted with her and were not allowed into her room, a source close to the investigation said.

Mr. Qureshi told The Globe and Mail on Monday night that Ms. Siddiqui had been renting the lower floor of his home for several months.

He said she had gone on a starvation diet prior to her death, eating only dates and drinking holy water.

After searching Mr. Qureshi’s property, however, police confirmed that Ms. Siddiqui’s room was in the upper storey of the house where Mr. Qureshi resided.

Ms. Siddiqui’s husband, Suleman Qaiser, as well as her brother, Mustafa Qayyum, had been trying to reach her for months. Finally, Mr. Qaiser contacted Canadian authorities and Interpol for assistance.

“We forwarded that request to Islamabad police,” Brigadier Javed Cheema, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said.

That prompted a police visit to Mr. Qureshi’s house, which was ultimately fruitless. Brig. Cheema said police continued to monitor the house, but never caught sight of Ms. Siddiqui.

Questions abound about Mr. Qureshi’s relationship with the 40-year-old businesswoman. Mr. Qureshi earlier told The Globe that he and Ms. Siddiqui were not business partners. Yet Canadian corporate records show that a person with the same name is listed as a co-director of two Ontario-based companies, along with Ms. Siddiqui.

In Toronto, Ms. Siddiqui’s former business mentor described her as honest, hardworking and in a loving relationship with her husband.

“She was sincere and extremely ambitious,” business consultant Bikram Lamba said in an interview. “She was almost too ambitious, to be frank.”

Mr. Lamba first met Ms. Siddiqui four years ago at a Canadian International Development Agency conference. Since then, he said, she relied on him regularly for advice on myriad projects she dreamed of starting.While she originally worked in the pharmaceutical industry like her husband, Ms. Siddiqui decided to move into consulting, Mr. Lamba said. He said she moved to Pakistan in part because her younger sister was running a business there, but Ms. Siddiqui did not believe her sister was “aggressive enough” to get things done.

The last time Mr. Lamba saw Ms. Siddiqui was in 2006, when she visited Canada. He said she showed no signs of depression or of a dispute with her husband. On numerous occasions, Mr. Lamba said, Ms. Siddiqui talked about an old college friend who was helping her with her business dealings in Pakistan: Mr. Qureshi.

“She never said anything negative about him,” Mr. Lamba said.

Ms. Siddiqui’s family members allege she was being kept at the minister’s home against her will for several months. But Mr. Qureshi insists the family’s jealousy of Ms. Siddiqui’s success and the financial pressure they exerted on her led to her death.

Ms. Siddiqui’s body was buried in a graveyard in North Karachi yesterday. It may be a week before her autopsy results are in, and Mr. Qureshi’s fate depends in large part on what those results reveal.

Popularity: 3% [?]

BUSINESS DEALINGS

The Globe and Mail, Tuesday, June 12, 2007
OMAR EL AKKAD AND SONYA FATAH

RICHMOND HILL, ONT., NEW DELHI — The Pakistani government minister who faces charges of wrongful confinement in the sudden death of a Canadian woman says he has been wrongly accused, and blames the woman’s financial stress and depression for her death.

But Muhammad Shahid Jamil Qureshi, Pakistan’s Minister of State for Communications, added to the confusion surrounding his relationship with businesswoman Kafila Siddiqui in an interview with The Globe and Mail yesterday.

He and Ms. Siddiqui were not business partners, he said. Yet Canadian corporate records show that a person with the same name is listed as a co-director, along with Ms. Siddiqui, of two Ontario-based companies.

Yesterday police in Islamabad charged Mr. Qureshi. Ms. Siddiqui, a 40-year-old mother of a five-year-old son, was declared dead shortly after being brought to a hospital by Mr. Qureshi on Saturday.

She had been living at the minister’s house.

“We have registered a case against the minister this afternoon, on charges of wrongful confinement,” police Senior Superintendent Zafar Iqbal said in an interview.

Mustafa Qayyum, the complainant in the case and Ms. Siddiqui’s brother, alleges that the minister held his sister against her will for three months.

Mr. Qureshi, a member of the Pakistan Muslim League founded by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, said in the interview that the responsibility for Ms. Siddiqui’s death lies with her husband and family.

When Ms. Siddiqui returned from a trip to Canada last February, he said, she was very depressed: “She said that her husband had verbally divorced her.”

Ms. Siddiqui’s husband, Salman Qaiser, could not be reached for comment. A brother of Mr. Qaiser had said in an interview Sunday that Mr. Qaiser was in Karachi arranging his wife’s funeral.

Mr. Qureshi said that he first met Ms. Siddiqui when the minister represented Pakistan at a joint venture conference in Toronto in May of 2005 that was organized by Ms. Siddiqui.

In the months before her death, Mr. Qureshi said, Ms. Siddiqui was renting the ground-floor section of his home in Islamabad’s G-11 sector, but was practically bankrupt. He said he was assisting her financially.

Police have asked to see the rental agreement between the two, which Mr. Qureshi said was in her name.

Mr. Qureshi denied suggestions that the two were romantically involved. “She was very religious,” he said, “and, in fact, during the last few months she was in such a deep depression that she had stopped eating and drinking, and only consumed dates and ab-e-zamzam (holy water).”

Police found vomit in the room that Ms. Siddiqui last occupied, but an initial postmortem proved inconclusive.In Canada, Ms. Siddiqui appears to have been involved in an elaborate series of interconnected consulting companies.

She is listed as the chair and CEO of Global Reach International Business Development Inc. Canada, a self-described event-management company. The company’s website no longer exists, although a 2005 copy of the site describes Ms. Siddiqui as having 13 years of sales and marketing experience.

Her website biography lists her as a member of a number of trade organizations. However, none of her memberships could be independently confirmed, and some of the trade organizations listed could not be found. According to the biography, Ms. Siddiqui also earned an MBA, although no educational institute is listed.

Mr. Qaiser is listed as the company’s “Executive Vice President Finance.”

Ms. Siddiqui and her husband are also listed as directors of another company: Orients Worldwide Consultants Inc. The company’s address is the same as the couple’s Richmond Hill home address.

Mr. Qureshi said that he had stayed at the home during a visit to Toronto, but that he and Ms. Siddiqui were not business partners.

Another two companies, Orients Worldwide Legal Services Inc. and Orients Worldwide Group of Companies Ltd., are also listed at the same address. Ms. Siddiqui is named as a director of both companies.

The other named director is “M. Shahid Jamil Qureshi.” On corporate records, Mr. Qureshi’s address is that of the Qaiser/Siddiqui family home in Richmond Hill.

Popularity: 3% [?]