Pakistan Arrests a Fleeing Mosque Leader After Hundreds Surrender

Jul 05, 10:18 AM

Current Headlines: By Carlotta Gall

Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.

* The Pakistani government seemed to gain the upper hand in its clash with two radical cleric brothers and their followers in a mosque complex here Wednesday, arresting the elder of the two brothers as he tried to escape - dressed as a woman - among some of the 700 students given safe passage out of the complex. After a bloody and chaotic day Tuesday that left 9 dead and nearly 100 wounded, the government acted in a much more concerted manner Wednesday. Troops backed by heavy armor threw a tight cordon around the complex and announced a curfew in the entire district around the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, which lies just a few blocks from the center of government.

Those inside were then ordered to surrender themselves and their weapons by 11 a.m. Wednesday. There was to be no negotiation with the clerics, government officials said.

After the violence Tuesday, gunfire rattled on overnight, residents said, and one man was shot near the mosque, bringing the death toll to 10, news channels reported.

By midmorning Wednesday, the area had been cordoned off by barbed wire and Pakistani Army Rangers in combat gear and was quiet, and security forces announced over a loudspeaker that the government was offering students safe passage out of the mosque complex, as well as incentives of 5,000 rupees, or about $100, and alternative education in a government madrasa.

"We ensure no action against women and children and those who were not involved in any unlawful activity and promise them a safe passage and 5,000 rupees each by President Pervez Musharraf as expenses for traveling to their homes," the minister of state for information and broadcasting, Tariq Azim Khan, said during a news conference Wednesday morning.

"We do not want bloodshed," he said. "We have repeatedly supported a peaceful resolution to the problem."

Families were bused in to a meeting place, and female students filtered out steadily during the day. Male students were not allowed to go free but were shown on a local television channel walking out in single file, hands in the air and being searched by police officers.

The men were then taken away for screening, and 170 were being detained on suspicion of involvement in previous offenses, the information minister, Muhammad Ali Durrani, said in the second of three news briefings that government officials gave during the day.

The government extended the deadline several times as large numbers of students took up the offer to get out.

"Our strategy is that we vacate the mosque with minimum losses," Durrani said.

However, the clerics were still refusing to surrender and sending mixed signals by asking for more time, Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, a spokesman for the government's national security management cell, said Wednesday evening just minutes before the news of Maulana Abdul Aziz's arrest.

"The two clerics remain defiant so far, and we haven't received any flexibility from their side," he said. The mosque leaders were also pressuring the students to stay, some students and their relatives said. Fez Muhammad, who was leading his two teenage daughters out of the complex in midafternoon, said the administrators of the mosque had not wanted them to leave. "They said if the women and others die, the people will take their side," he said.

One of his daughters, Taiba, aged 16, confirmed that the leaders of the mosque had tried to persuade them to stay and said they only left because her father had insisted. "They said: 'If you give your life, it will be in the way of Allah,' " she said.

Government officials said they did not know how many people remained in the mosque complex, but the commander of a Ranger unit at the scene estimated that 70 percent of the complex had been emptied, leaving perhaps 300 people inside. He predicted that the security forces would have to fight those who refused to surrender.

Maulana Abdul Aziz, the elder of the brothers running the mosque and adjacent religious schools, was arrested as he tried to leave the mosque among a crowd of women. He was dressed in a black all- enveloping burka, government officials said. The mosque and the madrasas had been founded by the father of the two brothers, a famous jihadist leader who was assassinated.

Aziz's younger brother, Abdur Rashid Ghazi, the more vocal of the two, is thought to be still inside the mosque complex along with some of the armed followers who battled with the security forces Tuesday.

The commander of a unit of Rangers deployed just a block away from the mosque complex said he expected the siege to be over in the next two days.

"It is the end of the game for them," he said.

The authorities cut off the power in the district and ordered residents to stay inside their houses. Three attack helicopters circled several times over the mosque just before dusk, raising fears among residents nearby that the security forces were preparing to storm the building.

Separately Wednesday, bombers struck twice in northwestern Pakistan, killing 13 people, and officials said at least one of the attacks was probably in retaliation for the clash at the mosque.

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