LAHORE, 13 September 2004 — A senior cleric belonging to Jamaat Al-Dawa was gunned down yesterday by an unidentified assailant in his house, police and party officials said.
A spokesman for Jamaat Al-Dawa, Yahya Mujahid, said Maulana Ibrahim Salafi was shot as he answered his door. His assailant fled with an accomplice on a waiting motorbike, he said. “We do not believe it was a sectarian murder,” he said.
Salafi, 55, was involved in preaching Islam and had “no political role” in the party, his spokesman said.
“We have registered a murder case and are investigating the motive behind the killing,” police officer Mushtaq Ahmed said. Jamaat Al-Dawa is led by Hafiz Saeed, the former chief of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LT) militant group, which was banned by President Pervez Musharraf in a crackdown against extremist groups in 2002.
A Dawa party official, Habibullah, said the slain cleric was on the “hit list of terrorists” who wanted to kill religious leaders to create unrest in the country.
Meanwhile, ten members of an outlawed extremist outfit were arrested yesterday over the murder of a Shiite university teacher in Quetta on Friday. The killing has triggered strong protests.
