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.
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