| Hold the old whip hand, do they? I notice it's not bureaucrats who're being bumped off lately... |
Clerics in Islamabad and Rawalpindi on Tuesday demanded the government provide them security otherwise they would not cooperate with it during Muharram. Qari Sher Afzal, central secretary of the Jammiat Ulema Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), at a press conference said the killings of religious leaders had increased in recent months and unidentified men had even tried to kill Dr Ghazi Abdur Rashid recently.
| Ghazi packs a rod, so he got away. The assailants will prob'ly remember that next time... |
He said that if the Islamabad police would not apprehend the people who tried to kill Mr Ghazi, then the clerics would not cooperate with the police during Muharram. "The ulema are under serious threat and the government should provide security to them or issue them licences for guns to protect themselves," he said. The clerics also demanded the government compensate 60 families of people who were killed in Gilgit even though a curfew had been imposed there. They also demanded the immediate release of Qari Saifullah Akhtar, Qari Ahmed Khan, Noor Badshah and Hafiz Muhammad Sadiq, who were arrested by law enforcement agencies under suspicion of involvement in the suicide attack on Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz last year. They said these people were innocent and had no links with terrorists.
| "Certainly not. I know them well." |
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