Hundreds of Islamists occupied Pakistan’s Red Mosque on Friday, painting the walls in their original colour and wrecking the official reopening of the complex after a bloody army assault on militants.
Protesters chased out a government-appointed religious elder who was meant to lead the first Friday prayers at the Islamabad mosque since the military operation there earlier this month that left more than 100 people dead.
The unarmed demonstrators, most of them former students of the pro-Taliban mosque in the heart of the leafy capital, flew jihadi flags from the minarets and pelted police vehicles with stones, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporter witnessed.
Five or six people carrying buckets daubed red paint over the outer walls, which had been changed to a peach colour during government renovations, while dozens more unfurled Islamist flags and banners on the roof.
”It is true that rowdy students have overtaken the mosque, they are not letting the prayers be held,” a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Despite tight security, the students stopped prayer leader Imam Mohammad Ashfaq taking up his position at the mosque’s pulpit and used the microphone to deliver their own furious speeches against the government raid.
”I was told everything would be peaceful. I was never interested in taking up this job and after today I will never do it,” Ashfaq told AFP as he left with a police escort.
The students demanded the return of the mosque’s chief cleric, Abdul Aziz, who was caught trying to flee the compound in a woman’s burqa during the siege and is now in jail awaiting trial on terror charges, Ashfaq said.
They chanted ”Musharraf is a dog, death to the Musharraf government”, adding that the blood of the mosque’s rebel leader Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who died in the assault, would ”bring an Islamic revolution”.
They also threw shoes at cameramen and reporters covering the event.
”It is an unfortunate situation,” interior ministry spokesperson Brigadier Javed Cheema told AFP.
”We worked day and night to open the mosque for people to offer prayers but some people, mainly former students, are trying to create mischief,” he said.
”We are monitoring the situation and will take appropriate measures to restore order. Security forces have not gone inside,” he added.
The unrest came a day after Religious Affairs Minister Ijaz-ul Haq reopened the mosque, with bullet holes from the bitter fighting plastered over by workmen and damaged fans and lighting all repaired.
The protests will raise questions about whether the government reopened the mosque too soon, with tensions still running high after the raid amid a wave of apparent revenge attacks by militants.
More than 200 people, many of them police and troops, have died in the spate of suicide attacks and rebel raids across the country, piling pressure on military leader Musharraf.
Authorities earlier this week razed an Islamic girls’ school and some staff quarters within the mosque compound that had been declared dangerous after the clashes.
The madrassa was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting and was where Ghazi was shot dead by government commandos on July 10. He had expressed hopes that his death would spark an Islamic revolution.
The mosque’s former clerics demanded that the government impose Islamic Sharia law in the country, and had launched a Taliban-style vigilante campaign, including the abduction of Chinese workers whom they accused of prostitution. – AFP
