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On the fifth day of trial in the case of the British-Pakistani man Muhammad Gohir Khan, charged for conspiring to kill Netherlands-based blogger and activist, Ahmad Waqass Goraya, on Wednesday, Khan took the stand and gave evidence of his relationship with the Pakistan-based middleman.
The Crown Prosecution Service closed the arguments as well as the testimony of the targeted blogger, Goraya was also read. Khan said he knew the middleman, Muzamil, also identified as Mudz, Zed or Papa on phone messages, from his school days in Pakistan, reported DAWN. Furthermore, he said he met him when he would visit his family home in Lahore during the school holidays. Khan said Muzamil was nicknamed Papa "because of his height" while describing him as "short, bald and stocky". He said he was nicknamed Papa after Papa Smurf of the popular comic strip the Smurfs. Years later when Khan ran a freight forwarding and cargo business out of London, he hired Muzamil in Lahore as a goods handler to replace previous employees who were laid off for poor performance. Khan initially said that he does not recall Muzamil's last name but later in the interview with the police, he said that it could be Qamar. His parents moved from Pakistan to the UK in the 1970s and he is the third youngest of six siblings. Khan was born and mostly raised in the UK. At the age of 13, he moved to Lahore to live as a boarding student at the Sharif Education Complex. Later in 2007, he returned to London without taking final exams as he faced difficulty with lessons being in Urdu. He was born and raised in London and has lived at his Forest Gate address his entire life. He is married with six children between the ages of 11 and 3. Talking about his work in London, he said he joined his uncle who worked at a market stall in Whitechapel, where they sold women's clothes and accessories. He later joined another uncle to work for a travel agency specialising in Hajj and Umrah packages. Not long after, Khan said he began to work for his father's business, World Wide Cargo Services, which transported goods between the UK and Pakistan. Khan said his addition to the family business saw it thrive and become successful. Advertisements with PTV in the UK and Europe as well as Google ads boosted the operations, he said, adding that later it went into decline, reported DAWN. (ANI)
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