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Bangkok police have arrested a prime suspect in Pakistan's deadliest factory fire, which killed over 250 workers in the southern port city of Karachi in 2012, officials and the accused's family confirmed Saturday.
Abdul Rehman Bhola, 46, an activist for the Muttehida Quami Movement (United National Movement or MQM), a major opposition party with strong roots in Karachi, was arrested in a police raid on a hotel in Bangkok's red light district Friday evening, reported Thailand English daily the Bangkok Post, "ing senior police and Interpol officials.
He was tracked by Thai Interpol following a Pakistani arrest warrant, the newspaper reported, adding that the suspect was being repatriated to Pakistan.
Bhola's wife, Samina Bano, told reporters in Karachi that her husband had been on the run for the last several months on the "advice" of the party leadership.
A police investigation last year found that the country's worst industrial disaster was not an accident but a "planned act of sabotage and terrorism," as the factory owners failed to pay a heavy extortion fee demanded by the accused and his accomplices.
According to the prosecution, Bhola and other suspects had acted on the directives of Hammad Siddiqui, then-head of MQM's organizing committee.
The MQM initially claimed to represent Urdu-speaking migrants who moved to Pakistan after the partition of India in 1947, and has influence in the urban parts of the southern Sindh province. But the group has been accused of operating as an organized gang through use of violence and intimidation.
The party currently stands divided into four groups following an anti-Pakistan speech made by its founder Altaf Hussain, who has been in exile in London since 1992. -
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