Some years ago, reports indicated that Turkey and Pakistan had set up a special unit to carry out propaganda against India, especially on Jammu and Kashmir. This was a brainchild of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI. One instance of this concerted joint campaign became apparent in early 2021, when a UK-based firm filed a legal appeal in a UK court against India’s Home Minister and Army Chief for alleged war crimes in Jammu and Kashmir.
More recently, while the #Qatargate scandal exposed the corruption of EU Parliamentarians by the Qatari regime involving bribe & money laundering of over €300,000, it is lesser known that the kingpin in the scandal, Hakan Camuz was also the mastermind behind the orchestrated attacks on India last year. Hakan Camuz is a UK-based legal consultant of Turkish origin.
His firms, Stoke White (SW) and The Radiant Trust, paid Equality Consultancy, a company linked to #Qatargate suspects, ex-Member of European Parliament (MEP) Pier Antonio Panzeri and his assistant Francesco Giorgi, €75,000 for “ethical lobbying services.”
It’s the very same SW firm that had launched the attack against India in January 2021, accusing the Army of “ #genocide in #Kashmir” based on an “investigation” by the Legal Forum for Oppressed Voices of Kashmir (LFOVK). LFOVK is another dubious entity headed by a Pakistani Judge Justice Ali Nawaz Chawhan and Advocate Nasir Qadri.
It was LFOVK which had started the Twitter trend “#arrestindianarmychief” crimes in Kashmir’ along with SW. The SW company, in a release, had then stated that it put up a “legal appeal” against the Indian Army chief, General M.M. Naravane and Home Minister Amit Shah to London’s Metropolitan Police and peddled the narrative of ‘war
following an investigative report on “war crimes in Jammu and Kashmir.”
Hakan Camuz, chief of the firm, reportedly said, “Kashmiri Muslims have only international law to turn to after decades of seeking justice in their own country and only being subjected to further violence for doing so. This means Stoke White must begin the process of justice on their behalf, in a country that we understand respects the rule of law.”
The ISI hand in this game was clearly understood by most and therefore, this campaign did not go too far. Since its inception SW firm has published two anti-India articles: India: Silencing Journalism & Human Rights in Kashmir (19 January 2022), by Khalil Dewan titled “India’s War Crimes in Kashmir: Violence and “Dissent & the War on Terror” (24 August 2022), by Khalil Dewan & Nasir Qadri. The former Khalil Dewan is Head of Investigations at SW since June 2021.
Before joining Stoke White, he worked at TRT World Research Centre from January 2019 to December 2019. He also worked as a Researcher at Middle East Monitor (2017-2018). Nasir Qadri is the Founder and executive director of Legal Forum for Kashmir (LFK), earlier “Legal Forum for Oppressed Voices of Kashmir (LFOVK)”. He operates from Pakistan. Nasir has global connections and has visited Turkey frequently. Qadri has close links with the Jamaat-e- Islami and DG, ISPR, the outreach arm of the ISI.
Today, Hakan Camuz is himself under investigation as he finds himself at the centre of the “Qatargate” scandal. His relationship with suspects of the
scandal has been established.
Hakan Camuz said two of his groups, had entered into a consultancy contract, with a company linked to Francesco Giorgi, Assistant to Pier Antonio Panzeri, a former MEP at the centre of a corruption scandal, which they believed were parliamentary services. A Financial Times report quotes Camuz as saying that he only spoke to Giorgi and believed the company was legitimate. If the investigation is successful, strict action can be taken against Camuz. Italian prosecutors have since expanded the Belgian-led investigation into suspected corruption by opening a separate money laundering probe.
Prosecutors are looking into payments worth almost €300,000 into Italian bank accounts held at Intesa Sanpaolo by a consultancy firm set up by Panzeri’s accountant. According to the transcript of Giorgi’s statement to investigators, the Milan-based company Equality Consultancy, was allegedly set up by Panzeri and Giorgi’s associates in Italy as a vehicle for payments for their lobbying efforts.
The company was placed into liquidation at the end of 2020 and finally shut down in June 2021. Two entities, which paid the consultancy a total of €75,000, are connected to Camuz, according to the Financial Times.
In 2019, The Radiant Trust, a “grant making body” where Camuz is a trustee, was charged €50,000 by Equality Consultancy. Camuz’s London-based advisory company, Phronesis, which was renamed Stoke White in November 2021, was charged €25,000. A separate Istanbul-based company was issued with two invoices totalling €200,000 by the Italian consultancy company. The first invoice, issued at the end of 2018, came when Panzeri was still an MEP and chair of the EU Parliament’s Human Rights Committee. Camuz claimed he was “devastated” by the allegations made by Giorgi and said he “was lied to”. He is considering taking legal action against Giorgi: “[He] honey trapped
us into thinking he was the perfect person with whom we can work with.”
Pertinently, Hakan Camuz has close links with Turkey’s Erdoğan family. He has served as Director of two Turkish fronts: MUSIAD & Turken Foundation. UK Turken foundation’s parent organizations, Ensar Foundation and “TURGEV” were established in 1996 by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In 2016, Ensar Foundation, which is run by the close associates of President Erdoğan, was involved in a child abuse scandal in Karaman, the central Anatolian town in Turkey.
In 2014, Camuz also represented Erdoğan’s son Bilal Erdoğan pertaining to a terror funding case when linkages of Bilal & Turkey’s Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) with the ISIS were exposed. The IHH is also closely linked to Erdoğan family. Notably, TURGEV works closely in alliance with IHH, which has also been accused of funding terror groups such as Al-Qaeda, Chechen separatists, and Hamas apart from ISIS. IHH was named in the UN Security Council documents and investigated
for supporting terrorist groups in Syria.
The IHH also works with Kathmandu-based Islami Sangh Nepal (ISN) in the Bharat-Nepal border. ISN is under the radar of Indian intelligence agencies for allegedly providing sanctuary to fugitive terrorists in 2018. The Radiant Trust, where Camuz serves as a Trustee, also has a questionable background. The operations manager of the company, Zafer Altinbas has served a jail term of nearly seven years for immigration law breach & receiving money from proceeds of crime. Hakan Camuz is one shining instance of how Pakistan and Turkey conspire against India to bring negative attention to bear on Kashmir.
