KARACHI, 26 May 2005 — Around 5,000 people rallied here yesterday against the alleged desecration of the Holy Qur’an by US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay prison, torching an effigy of US President George W. Bush, witnesses said.
The protesters, mostly students, also chanted anti-US slogans as they left the headquarters of Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest religious party, and walked about one kilometer to hold a demonstration at the tomb of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.
The rally was organized by Pakistan’s powerful religious alliance Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), which called it a prelude to countrywide demonstrations expected tomorrow.
“These demonstrations will not stop unless US apologizes and punishes the American soldiers responsible for the desecration of Qur’an,” MMA Vice-President Ghafoor Ahmed told the participants of rally. The demonstration follows unrest in Muslim world after a May 2 report in Newsweek magazine that US investigators had found that interrogators at the prison desecrated Qur’an in to rattle Muslim inmates.
Fifteen people died in Afghanistan as violence erupted there.
The magazine last week retracted the story after its source developed doubts, and the Pentagon has said its own investigation has found no evidence to support the allegation that Qur’an was defiled at the prison.
Still, Pakistan has said it will raise the issue with visiting US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca, who started a three-day visit of Pakistan yesterday.
Meanwhile, Britain’s high commissioner to Pakistan said yesterday the hunt for fugitive Al-Qaeda network chief Osama Bin Laden has not gone cold.
“It (the search for Bin Laden) has not gone into cold storage,” Mark Lyall Grant told reporters during a visit to the northwestern city of Peshawar, which is near the Afghanistan border.
US and Pakistani officials believe Bin Laden may be sheltering somewhere along the mountainous and poorly defined frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
He has evaded a massive manhunt launched in late 2001 when he was the guest of Afghanistan’s ousted hard-line Taleban regime.
Al-Qaeda has been branded by the British Home Office as the most significant terrorist threat to Britain and British interests overseas.
Grant also said there were links between extremists in Pakistan and those living in his country but did not elaborate. “We do work very closely with Pakistan (on issues) that relate to the UK,” he added.
Britain, like Pakistan, is a key ally of the United States in its so-called war against terrorism.
In an unrelated development, six members of the same family were killed when a bomb planted by unidentified men destroyed their home in a remote Pakistani tribal region near the Afghan border, officials said yesterday.
The attack occurred late Tuesday in Makin village in South Waziristan district and the victims included a woman, her two sons and three daughters, they said.
“Some unknown men planted a powerful bomb close to the boundary wall of the house of local tribesman Resham Khan, killing his family,” local official Anwar Zeb said.
Khan was not at home when the attack happened, Zeb said, adding authorities were investigating the motive for the attack.
Separately, two bombs exploded overnight in the neighboring North Waziristan district, damaging a shop and injuring a man.
