Daily Times

KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court has permitted Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s leader Amir Khan to travel abroad.

Amir Khan is facing charges of harboring and using terrorists.

Judge Qudos Memon, the link judge for ATC-IV, allowed Amir’s plea for traveling to Dubai for two weeks subject to furnishing a surety of Rs1million.

Amir had moved the application through his counsel Shoukat Hayat in ATC-IV and had sought permission to travel abroad for personal reasons.

His counsel submitted that Amir wanted to travel to Dubai to get his visa renewed as it was nearing expiry. His family is settled in the UAE and his two sons were studying in a university there.

Shaukat had contended that if his client failed to get his visa renewed, the study of his sons and their stay there would be in jeopardy. He, therefore, pleaded the judge, to allow his client to travel abroad.

The MQM leader, who is on bail, would travel abroad for the third time. Earlier, he was allowed to go to Saudi Arabia for Hajj and he had also been to Dubai after his release on bail.

Amir was placed under three-month preventive detention following his arrest on March 11 last year by the Rangers along with others. He was booked for allegedly harboring terrorists.

Earlier on June 29 the court had granted him bail against a surety of Rs 1 million and restrained him from leaving the country without its permission.

A case was registered against the MQM leader under Sections 11V (directing terrorist activities), 21J (harboring any person who committed an offence under this act), and 7 (punishment for act of terrorism) of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 on the complaint of a Rangers official at the Azizabad police station.