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Pakistan frees extremists over police hostage drama

By zaheer | May 20, 2007

ISLAMABAD,Hardline clerics holding four Pakistani police at a mosque here won the release of four extremists after a tense day-long stand-off between armed police and baton-wielding students.
The clerics said they would release two of the policemen, snatched late Friday, after authorities partially bowed to their demands.

“We are releasing two policemen after negotiations but will continue to hold the other two until all our 11 men arrested by the intelligence agency are freed,” the mosque’s deputy leader Abdul Rashid Ghazi told reporters.

He said the negotiations were now over and would be resumed when the administration is willing to release the seven others in detention.

No comment was available from the interior ministry or the local administration over the deal. The four are expected to be freed after formalities.

Dozens of students from a madrassa, or seminary, attached to the Red Mosque late Friday seized the four policemen and took them inside, demanding the release of 11 colleagues picked up by intelligence agencies recently.

Armed police took up positions on Saturday close to the mosque, while students armed with batons blocked some nearby roads.

The government’s apparent concession came despite recent warnings by President Pervez Musharraf that militancy was on the increase and that “we need to strongly counter it.”

The Red Mosque stand-off represents the latest challenge facing Musharraf amid a political crisis over the suspension of the country’s top judge.

Ghazi earlier threatened reprisals nationwide if any operation were launched against the mosque or the seminary.

“Any operation will have disastrous consequences,” Ghazi said.

A high-level meeting at the interior ministry late Friday decided “not to use force to free the police and to continue the path of negotiations for the sake of public safety,” a senior government official told AFP.

Topics: Pakistan News |