M A I N   N E W S

Lal Masjid Stand-off 
Day 2
1,200 surrender, desert
Top cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz arrested

A group of Pakistani radical students of the Lal Masjid sit on the ground near the mosque in Islamabad on Wednesday after surrendering to the authorities. — AFP photo

Islamabad, July 4
The chief cleric of the Lal Masjid besieged by army troops was caught today trying to escape wearing a burqa as over 1,200 radical students and militants holed up in the mosque complex surrendered to the government.

In a breakthrough that could lead to an early end to the tense standoff, Tariq Pervez, chief police commissioner, said a female police officer searching women fleeing the mosque’s madarsa discovered Maulana Abdul Aziz under an all-enveloping black shroud. There were reports that his wife was also arrested.

Aziz, along with his younger brother Abdul Rashid Ghazi, was leading the heavily armed militant students of the madarsa run by the Lal Masjid. He tried to slip past the troops guarding the area. The two brothers would be charged for act of terrorism, murder and abduction, said minister of state for information Tariq Azim.

After Aziz’s arrest, 400 more militants and radical students surrendered taking the total number of those surrendering today to 1,200.

Hundreds of soldiers and the police sealed off the mosque and imposed an indefinite curfew in the neighbourhood after Tuesday’s bloodshed. Two deadlines for students to lay down arms passed and no new one was set. The violence erupted after a months-long stand-off between the authorities and a Taliban-style movement based at the Lal Masjid less than a couple of kilometres from the parliament and Islamabad’s protected diplomatic enclave.

Growing numbers of students took up an offer for safe passage and 5,000 rupees ($85) and left the mosque.

“There was shooting all night. I am leaving, what else to do, I don’t want to get killed,” said Wahid, 18. “I don’t have a weapon. I don’t even know how to use them”. Men, who surrendered were herded onto police buses while the women, clad in black, all-enveloping burqas, were released.

Information minister Mohammad Ali Durrani said more people were leaving the mosque than expected. He also said the authorities had been forced to act. “There was growing pressure from the media and the international community to contain it. The government was forced, compelled to do it,” he said.

Liberal politicians have for months pressed President Pervez Musharraf to crack down on Lal Masjid’s clerics, who had threatened suicide attacks if force was used against them.

Deputy interior minister Zafar Warraich said armed resistors would be shot on sight. “A bullet will be responded with by a bullet,” he said.

The violence comes at a bad time for Musharraf. He is preparing for presidential and general elections and is already struggling to dampen a campaign by lawyers and the opposition against his suspension of the country’s top judge in March.

The USA has stood by an ally crucial to any success in crushing Al-Qaida and the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and a senior official said he understood Pakistan’s caution.

“I can understand, the government’s been very careful. There are women and children inside this mosque, they don’t want to go in with heavy force,” Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state, told reporters in Rome.

Deadlock continues

Overnight, power was cut off to the compound and surrounding neighbourhood and barbed wire laid across junctions.

The information ministry said 16 persons had been killed in Tuesday’s clashes but some bodies could still be in the mosque. About 150 persons were hurt, 54 with bullet wounds, others suffering from the effects of tear gas.

The religious hardliners have confronted the authorities for months, running a vigilante anti-vice drive and campaigning for the strict Islamic law.

The authorities had not used force for fear it could provoke attacks or lead to casualties among female students at a madarsa in the mosque compound. Some clerics tried mediating to end the standoff.

“The talks appear to be heading nowhere,” Abdul Rashid Ghazi, deputy leader of the students, said by telephone from the mosque. A young woman in the mosque compound was defiant. “Nobody wants to leave. Your faith gets stronger in a situation like this,” the student, Mahira, said by telephone. The students affiliated with the mosque range in age from teenagers to people in their 30s, most from conservative areas near the Afghan border.

The mosque has a long history of support for militant causes, but the latest trouble began in January when students occupied a library in protest against the destruction of mosques built illegally on state land. They later kidnapped women they said were involved in prostitution and abducted policemen.

The Lal Masjid movement is part of a phenomenon known as “Talibanisation”, or the seeping of militancy from remote tribal regions on the Afghan border into central areas.

Pak minister of religious affairs resigns
Afzal Khan writes from Islamabad

Liaquat also anchors a popular religious programme which invited criticism that the minister has been entirely neglecting his official functions. The resignation coincides with the government operation against defiant clerics of the Lal Masjid

Lal Masjid a state within a state: Nilofar

Islamabad, July 4
Pakistan’s former tourism minister Nilofar Bakhtiar has said that extremism was on the rise in the country with the radical Lal Masjid here becoming a "state within a state."

She said this while urging the Pakistan Supreme Court to take suo motu action against the Lal Masjid administration for issuing a "false fatwa" against her.

Expressing alarm at the rapid rise of extremism in Pakistan, the former minister said that if no action was taken by the apex court, she would initiate civil and criminal proceedings against the mosque for damaging her reputation and her political career.

She pointed out that she had already served a legal notice on the so-called "Sharia court" established by the Lal Masjid administration, but the radical clerics had not apologised to her. In regard to the government’s delay of the crackdown on the madrassa, she said this question should be put to President Pervez Musharraf.

Senator Bakhtiar regretted that neither the government nor her Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) party supported her, leaving her with no option but to resign from the cabinet, the Dawn daily said in a report from New York.

While in office, the senator said, she had courageously advocated the cause of women's rights, something which no one in the present government appreciated.

She said till the big landlords ran the show Pakistan would not change.

Bakhtiar had served a legal notice on the Lal Masjid "sharia court" last month for issuing a fatwa, alleging that the decree had damaged her reputation, family honour and political career.

Bakhtiar's legal notice to Lal Masjid "sharia court" served through Aslam Khaki, asks Mufti Yunus who issued the decree, to apologise for un-Islamic and unlawful conduct that hurt the dignity of an honourable Muslim woman.

The notice warned that the failure to apologise would result in civil and legal proceedings.

Bakhtiar had dismissed speculation that she was asked to quit by the Prime Minister.

According to her she had resigned after there was malicious criticism of her conduct when she went paragliding in France during a fundraising trip. — PTI