The Pakistani port megacity of Karachi on Wednesday (23) elected as mayor a politician who is currently in jail on sedition and terrorism charges, a day after the leader of his party was charged with treason. Waseem Akhtar, a former minister and parliamentarian of the influential Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), won the mayoral poll by a landslide with 196 of the total 294 votes cast by the city’s municipal authorities. Akhtar was arrested in July and accused of ordering a crackdown on city riots in 2007, when he was serving as provincial home minister, that resulted in a bloody massacre.…
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