[Dawn] About 150 members of Pakistain's parliament, provincial assemblies and senate have received anonymous text messages demanding that they resign or be killed, the interior minister said.Two suspects from Larkana district in Sindh province are being held over the threats, Interior Minister Rehman Malik
Pak politician, current Interior Minister under the Gilani administration. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. He later joined the Pak Peoples Party and was chief security officer to Bhutto. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Näwaz Shärif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men.
told news hounds on Saturday, after help from the cyber crime wing of the Federal Investigation Agency.
"Threatening SMS were sent... asking them to resign or get killed," Malik said.
Pakistain is battling multiple insurgencies including Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked networks whose attacks are blamed for thousands of deaths in the past four years including those of several politicians.
An MP from northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
province, speaking on condition of anonymity
... for fear of being murdered...
, told AFP that he and colleagues regularly received such threats "by SMS and other means" but that he believed authorities dealt with them well.
"It is a routine, we get so many threats, but our institutions are tackling this issue very well. Many culprits have been jugged in the past for sending threatening messages," he said.