Imran Farooq case.

A DECADE after estranged MQM leader Imran Farooq was brutally bludgeoned to death in a quiet London neighbourhood, an antiterrorism court in Islamabad on Thursday sentenced three men to life in jail for the murder. Moreover, the court ruled that Muttahida supremo Altaf Hussain ordered the murder of the man once considered to be a close confidant of the party's founder. Though the case had been weakened by a delayed investigation, the decision is important as it has established in a court of law what many had suspected for decades: that behind the veneer of politics, Mr Hussain was running the MQM as a criminal organisation, particularly showing no mercy to internal dissent. In the mid-1990s, Azeem Ahmed Tariq, chairman of the MQM, was mysteriously murdered. His killers have yet to be found, though it is widely believed he was neutralised because he posed a potential challenge to Mr Hussain's leadership. Imran Farooq also had a reputation for ruthlessness and was at one time considered the MQM's key ideologue, before he drifted away from Altaf and was reportedly considering forming his own political set-up.

The conviction also provides an unenviable denouement of the MQM story. At one time, the united Muttahida ruled over Karachi and the rest of urban Sindh with an iron fist. Altaf Hussain was the uncrowned king of Karachi, with the nation's leading political parties, its establishment, as well as foreign forces wooing him and his party for their respective purposes. Its violent tactics were overlooked - such as during...