ISLAMABAD, 21 August 2006 — The Pakistan government has decided to move swiftly against some 400 alleged leading activists of banned organizations in a fresh drive against extremism, news reports said yesterday.
The decision to launch a crackdown came nearly ten days after a failed airline terrorism plot in Britain that found connection in Pakistan.
Top-ranking police and intelligence officials met in Islamabad on Saturday to draw up a new plan, following instructions by President Pervez Musharraf to move strongly against the “preachers of sectarian hatred and violence.” The meeting of the Inter-Provincial Coordination Committee (IPCC) decided to take action against some 400 activists of organizations Musharraf had banned in early 2002.
“They would be proceeded against under the Anti-Terrorist Act and detained for a year,” English language daily The News reported. However, the cases of identified extremist activists would be reviewed every three months.
There had been similar crackdowns on extremist elements in the past but most of them were released after months of detention.
The IPCC has also decided to seal printing presses involved in producing “hate material” and take action against prayer leaders who incite people to sectarian violence.
Musharraf on Friday directed the police to take strict action against those people involved in spreading religious hatred.
His remarks followed a Pakistani-British investigation into the alleged airline terrorism plot uncovered in Britain last week.
Pakistan has arrested a number of persons in connection with the failed plot that includes a British-born key suspect, Rashid Rauf, now being interrogated by the Pakistani and British police and intelligence officials.
There were also unconfirmed reports of arrest in Pakistan of a leading Al-Qaeda operative, Matiur Rehman, who had met with Rauf — the alleged ringleader who provided valuable clues that helped foil the plot to blow up US-bound aircraft in midair.
Officially, nothing much has been made public but various local and foreign publications have been divulging details on Rauf and his life in Bahawalpur, central Pakistan, where he has been living since his flight from Birmingham in 2002.
Pakistan has so far arrested more than 700 Al-Qaeda terrorists and their local supporters, most of them handed over to the United States.
Authorities are maintaining silence and caution about the FBI team and the six-member British investigators’ activities in Pakistan. Zarmina Afridi, a resident of Bahawalpur, who lives in the neighborhood of Maulana told Arab News telephonically that the FBI men came in jeeps with dark tinted glasses to Bahawalpur. They met Master Allah Bux ,father of banned Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar.
In Islamabad, the British investigators held a meeting with Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Sherpao. They reportedly discussed legal modalities to extradite Rashid Rauf who is also a British citizen. But Rauf is the only one of the suspects in Pakistan custody to have been named by Pakistan authorities.
