ISLAMABAD, Feb 28: Pakistan is considering the release of some of 2,060 Muslim militants detained in a sweep last month despite its current crackdown on such activists, a senior government official said here on Thursday.
The militants are from five banned Islamic groups, including two India accuses of carrying out a Dec-13 suicide raid on the Indian parliament.
“We are in the process of categorising these people to see who are innocent and who are dangerous,” Brig Javed Iqbal Cheema, head of the Interior Ministry’s Crisis Management Cell, told Reuters.
The cell oversees the crackdown on Muslim militants ordered by President Gen Pervez Musharraf in his address on Jan 12.
“We are working on a policy to deal with them. It will take some time to finalise this policy,” Cheema said.
“We may ask them to fill a surety bond and give guarantee that they will not indulge in such (militant) activities before releasing them,” he added.
The move to free the activists came amid a fresh offensive by the military government against Muslim militants with the detention of 58 activists over a murderous attack on a Shia mosque.
Eleven Shia worshippers died in Tuesday’s attack as they were praying in a mosque in Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad.
STIRRING UP TROUBLE: Under pressure from western leaders, Musharraf in his January address vowed to rein in Islamic militancy and outlawed five militant groups accused of fomenting religious unrest among minority Shia and majority Sunni sects in Pakistan and stirring up trouble elsewhere.
Thousands of people were rounded up within days of the speech, and under the law of the land they can be detained for up to three months without charge.
Under this order, the authorities also detained leaders of two main Islamic groups.
Police in November detained Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the head of Jamaat-i-Islami, and Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the head of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam. They were detained at the height of pro-Taliban protests by the hardline Muslim groups.
The protests were against Musharraf’s support for the US-led war on terrorism in neighbouring Afghanistan.—Reuters
