Pakistani police raided offices and homes of dozens of radical Islamic leaders, putting several under house arrest and detaining hundreds of their associates in a bid to foil a rally planned to take place yesterday in the capital to protest cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, officials said.
But Maulana Fazlur Rahman, a lawmaker and parliamentary opposition leader from the six-party religious coalition that is organizing the rally, vowed it would proceed despite a government ban and police barricades around the capital.
Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the chief of the six-party coalition, was placed under house arrest in the eastern city of Lahore, while other senior leaders in Islamabad were either arrested or asked not to leave their homes.
PHOTO: AP
Mian Maqsood, a spokesman for the coalition, said "hundreds" of Islamic leaders had been arrested, although Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said only about two dozen had been detained to stop the latest protest against the publication of Prophet Mohammed cartoons in Europe and elsewhere.
150 arrested
Chaudhry Shafqaat Ahmed, chief investigator of Lahore police, said about 150 supporters of the coalition and several other religious groups were arrested on Saturday night and another 150 were listed to be arrested.
"These people could create problems of law and order in the city or in Islamabad," Ahmed said.
The arrests came hours after the government warned radical Islamic groups against holding the rally, fearing it would spark more violence after at least five people died in riots across the country over the past week.
Police had set up road blocks into Islamabad yesterday and cars and other vehicles were being checked for supporters of the religious alliance.
Paramilitary troops patrolled the streets in pickup trucks with mounted machine guns, while soldiers barricaded themselves behind sand bags near key government buildings and at an enclave housing foreign embassies, witnesses said.
Rahman, who had not been arrested, described the ban as unconstitutional.
"We do not accept these orders," Rahman said. "I want to make it clear that the protest will be held. The government should take back the ban."
But a government official reiterated yesterday that the rally will not be allowed.
"If five or more than five people gather, they will be arrested," said Mohammed Ali, a senior government administrator in Islamabad.
Militants
Pakistani intelligence officials have said militants from outlawed extremist groups have been stirring up the visolence. Authorities have also banned demonstrations in several cities in the country's east, where riots turned deadly last week.
The cartoons offend Muslims because Islamic tradition bars drawings of Mohammed, favorable or otherwise, in a policy to discourage idolatry.
The drawings were first published in the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, and reprinted by European media outlets that insist they're exercising their right to free speech.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
RSS