Pakistan rejects militants’ surrender terms
Women, kids allegedly being used as shields in deadly 3-day standoff
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 6:17 p.m. ET July 5, 2007
msnbc.msn.com
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A Pakistani cleric holed up in an Islamabad mosque said on Thursday he and his student followers were willing to surrender, after three days of violence in which 19 people have died.
But authorities rejected his offer, saying his attempt to attach conditions was unacceptable and insisting he release women and children human shields.
Violence erupted outside the Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid, in the capital on Tuesday after a months-long stand-off between the authorities and the Taliban-supporting clerics and their thousands of followers, some of them armed.
Officials said over 1,100 militants had given up and more emerged early Thursday as police using loudspeakers urged the hold-outs to surrender.
There were intermittent clashes and several loud explosions through the day on Thursday. Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said some holes had been blasted in the compound walls.
Hundreds of troops and police are surrounding the students in their fortified mosque in a leafy neighborhood in the center of Islamabad.
Cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, speaking in a telephone interview from the mosque, said he and his followers would surrender if those who were not members of banned militant groups could go free, and if he could remain in the mosque with his sick mother.
“If they are linked to any banned organization, it can be verified ... those who are not should be let go,” he told Geo Television.
Suggestions members of militant groups were among his students were propaganda, he said, adding: “I and my mother should be allowed to live in the mosque until I make some alternative arrangements.”
But the government ruled out any conditions.
“If he is sincere in his offer then first of all he should immediately release the women, girls and innocent children who are being kept there forcefully,” Cheema told a news conference.
“If he is ready to surrender with his students, if it is unconditional, then he should lead them out,” he said. “They should leave their weapons in the mosque.”
Human shields?
Many Pakistanis welcome the action against the militants, whose behavior in recent months had been reminiscent of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Moderate politicians and the media have for months urged President Pervez Musharraf to crack down but heavy casualties in an assault on the mosque would be damaging for him. Musharraf faces elections later this year.
Ghazi’s elder brother and chief cleric of the mosque, Abdul Aziz, was captured on Wednesday trying to escape from the mosque in a woman’s all-enveloping burqa.
Authorities don’t know how many people are still in the mosque but Aziz, in an interview broadcast on state television on Thursday, said 850 students were there, 600 of them women and girls. He urged them to give up.
The government said many of those still in the mosque were being kept there against their will as human shields.
“A large number of women and children are being held hostage,” said Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim Khan.
'Passion for jihad'
In an interview broadcast earlier on state television, the leader of the Red Mosque's Taliban-style student movement, caught the previous evening trying to escape wearing a woman's burqa, said only 14 men were armed with Kalashnikovs in the Islamabad mosque. An Interior Ministry spokesman put "hard core elements" between 30 and 40, and a senior paramilitary officer reckoned there were 100 armed men.
Abdul Aziz, clad in a woman's all-enveloping garment like the one he was caught in, began the interview by dramatically lifting the black veil to reveal a face dominated by a bushy beard.
Smiling through much of a bizarre interview, Aziz said he had wanted to leave the mosque, and had urged others to do the same, but some women teachers had persuaded girls to stay behind.
"They are not being used as human shields, we only gave them passion for jihad," said Aziz, who was later remanded in court.
Bloody history
The mosque has a history of supporting militancy but the latest trouble began in January when students, who range from pre-teenagers to people in their 30s, occupied a library to protest the destruction of mosques illegally built on state land.
They later kidnapped women who they said were involved in prostitution, abducted police and intimidated shops selling Western films, while demanding enforcement of strict Islamic law.
Threats of suicide attacks had stopped the government from using force earlier, and two attacks on security forces elsewhere in the country on Wednesday raised fears the mosque's militant allies were hitting back.
Liberal politicians have for months pressed President Pervez Musharraf, who faces elections later this year, to crack down on the cleric brothers in charge of the mosque and their movement.
The Lal Masjid movement is part of a phenomenon known as "Talibanisation" -- the spread of militant influence from remote tribal regions on the Afghan border into central areas.
The government has set several deadlines for surrender and used scare tactics, including warning explosions, bursts of gunfire and helicopter gunships flying overhead to weaken the resolve of the mosque's occupants. |
