{"id":2724,"date":"2020-09-23T22:37:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-23T17:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ziaurrehman.media\/?p=2724"},"modified":"2020-09-23T22:37:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-23T17:37:00","slug":"2-sentenced-to-hang-for-deadly-garment-factory-fire-in-pakistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/23\/2-sentenced-to-hang-for-deadly-garment-factory-fire-in-pakistan\/","title":{"rendered":"2 Sentenced to Hang for Deadly Garment Factory Fire in Pakistan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By\u00a0Zia ur-Rehman\u00a0and\u00a0Salman Masood<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sept. 23, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/09\/23\/world\/asia\/pakistan-garment-factory-fire.html<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>KARACHI, Pakistan \u2014 Eight years after\u00a0Pakistan<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0worst industrial fire killed 264 people and injured 60 others<\/a>\u00a0at a garment factory in the country\u2019s largest city, a court has sentenced two men to hang for arson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for distraught families of the victims, justice was long delayed, and the verdict on Tuesday fell short.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It came after years of hearings and testimony from at least 400 witnesses. The slow pace of the trial frustrated victims\u2019 families, who accused the police of failing to properly investigate and charge the real culprits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saeeda Khatoon, 50, whose 18-year-old son was killed in the 2012 fire at the complex owned by Ali Enterprises, said that the factory\u2019s owners were equally responsible for the blaze because of lax safety standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey have been provided a systematic escape,\u201d she said of the owners, adding, \u201cOnly the lower tier of perpetrators were granted punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fire raised questions about poor regulations in the country\u2019s industrial and manufacturing sectors. Activists and victims\u2019 families say factory owners have been mostly lax or negligent in setting up proper security protocols, leaving workers vulnerable to accidents. Corruption has also contributed to the poor enforcement of safety regulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2012 fire also shed light on the underbelly of Karachi\u2019s politics, in which political parties have been accused of running armed rackets and extortion rings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two men sentenced this week, Abdul Rehman and Muhammad Zubair, formerly worked for the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, or MQM, a political party that has a history of political violence and once controlled the port city with an iron fist. It lost much of its clout in recent years after the country\u2019s powerful military launched operations against armed members of the party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The court found that Mr. Rehman and Mr. Zubair had set the factory ablaze in retribution because the owners had refused to pay extortion money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his 146-page verdict, Judge Abdul Qadoos Memon of the antiterrorism court in Karachi stressed that the fire had occurred because of \u201carson and sabotage,\u201d not because of \u201cgas leakage or electric short circuit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the fire erupted on the evening of Sept. 11, 2012, in a commercial hub in Karachi, it quickly engulfed the building. The multistory complex \u2014 which manufactured ready-made garments, mainly for the German textile discount chain KiK \u2014 had no fire escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The windows of the building had iron grills. Workers desperately tried to escape, but most were trapped inside and consumed by fire. Many tried to save themselves by jumping from the top floors. Firefighters extinguished the blaze a day later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The factory\u2019s owners, Arshad Bhaila and Shahid Bhaila, were initially arrested but were released on bail. They later moved abroad and were questioned by investigators via video link from Dubai. Raja Pervez Ashraf, then Pakistan\u2019s prime minister, had urged that murder charges be dropped against the factory owners, <\/a>local news outlets reported, setting off a public furor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Investigators named an MQM official, Hammad Siddiqui, as the mastermind behind the extortion plot. Mr. Siddiqui demanded $1.2 million as protection money from the factory\u2019s owners and plotted the fire after failing to get it, they said. But he has absconded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The judge handed life sentences to four guards at the factory for contributing to the disaster by locking the exit doors. Four other people were acquitted for lack of evidence, including Rauf Siddiqui, a senior leader of MQM, and former provincial minister. No execution date has been set for Mr. Rehman and Mr. Zubair. At minimum, they will serve life sentences, but they can appeal the verdict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaders of MQM, which since 2017 has splintered into different factions, portrayed the verdict as a vindication and expressed condolences for the victims. \u201cWe express our sympathies with the victims\u2019 families as they had to wait for eight years to get justice,\u201d said Faisal Sabzwari, an MQM leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ali Haider Zaidi, a federal minister and member of the governing Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, said the verdict should give some closure to the families, but he noted that only low-level workers had been sentenced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSad part of the verdict is that as usual, the facilitators, planners, aiders & abettors escape punishment while the little guy who committed these crimes on their orders get sentenced,\u201d Mr. Zaidi said on Twitter.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Khatoon, who lost a son in the fire, has formed a victims group called Ali Enterprises Factory Fire Affectees. Along with relatives of three other victims, she sued KiK and has moved to file complaints against the Pakistani social auditing firm RINA, which granted fire-safety certificates to the factory<\/a> seven days before the blaze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After four years of campaigning and negotiations by a network of Pakistan\u2019s labor rights groups with their global partners, KiK agreed to pay $5.15 million in compensation to the victims\u2019 families through the International Labor Organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Muhammad Essa, a rickshaw driver whose nephew died in the fire, said that the family had been waiting for justice for a long time. \u201cOn that fateful day, my nephew left the home for the factory with a smile, but his body was returned to the home in the form of coal,\u201d Mr. Essa said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added, \u201cGod will punish the culprits who burned innocent and poor workers alive in the factory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zia ur-Rehman reported from Karachi and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan.
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By\u00a0Zia ur-Rehman\u00a0and\u00a0Salman Masood Sept. 23, 2020 https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/09\/23\/world\/asia\/pakistan-garment-factory-fire.html KARACHI, Pakistan \u2014 Eight years after\u00a0Pakistan\u2019s\u00a0worst industrial fire killed 264 people and injured 60 others\u00a0at a garment factory in the country\u2019s largest city, a court has sentenced two men to hang for arson. But for distraught families of the victims, justice was long delayed, and the verdict on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1361,1363,27],"tags":[215,558],"class_list":["post-2724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-conflict-militancy","category-karachi-security","category-new-york-times","tag-baldia-fire-factory","tag-industrial-incidents-in-pakistan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}