ISLAMABAD, 6 July 2007 — The Pakistani government yesterday rejected a conditional offer of surrender by a religious leader holed up in Islamabad’s Red Mosque.
Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the deputy leader of the mosque, offered to surrender if he can stay on the premises temporarily with his sick mother, but the government said he must give up unconditionally.
Ghazi said he was willing to hand over the mosque and its affiliated Islamic schools to a government department for religious buildings. “I am making this offer to save the lives of the students,” he told private Geo television.
“I want to stay in one of the houses behind the mosque compound with my mother who is sick and with the wife of my brother until I get an alternative place to move to,” he said. His brother Abdul Aziz was caught trying to flee the mosque in a “burqa” on Wednesday night.
Deputy Information Minister Tariz Azeem dismissed the offer, and accused him of using his mother as a bargaining chip. “The time for rhetoric is over, it is time for action,” Azeem said.
“Instead of issuing statements he should come out with the women and children he is using as shields, hand over all the weapons, and bring it to a decent closure,” he said. “He is a wanted man, he is a declared absconder. It will be up to the court to decide his future.”
The minister earlier told a news conference that a large number of women and children were being held hostage by armed men in a room and that Ghazi was hiding in the basement of an attached madrasa with 25 “women hostages.”
“Yes, they’re using them as human shields, because the people who have come out told us that they’re telling women and children not to worry because as long you’re here forces will not attack us,” he said.
In an interview broadcast earlier on state television, Ghazi’s brother Abdul Aziz, who was caught while trying to escape wearing a woman’s “burqa”, said 850 students remained inside, including 600 women and girls. Smiling through much of a bizarre interview, Aziz also appealed to those inside to surrender.
The captured leader appeared in court yesterday and was charged with plotting terrorist attacks and kidnapping people, including seven Chinese nationals. He was remanded in custody for a week, an official said. New gunbattles and blasts rocked the mosque in the evening. Students threw hand grenades on the troops surrounding the mosque. Two huge blasts about an hour later destroyed most of the wall surrounding the complex.
— Additional input from agencies
