July 08, 2007	Sunday	Jamadi-us-Sani 22, 1428

LAHORE, July 7: The Jamaat-i-Islami on Saturday demanded a judicial inquiry into various aspects of the Lal Masjid saga, observing that events unfolding since January this years had left behind many questions which must be answered.

Speaking at a news conference, Jamaat deputy secretary-general MNA Farid Ahmad Piracha, Lahore amir MNA Hafiz Salman Butt and spokesperson Amirul Azeem said the way huge quantities of arms and ammunition reaching inside the mosque, located in the heart of the federal capital, as to make possible for the mosque hardliners to fight a pitched battle with the Pakistan Army for several days, was the most pertinent question which required to be investigated by a commission of judges.

They were of the view that sophisticated arms, including machine guns, could not be smuggled into the mosque without a ‘patronage’. They said that doubt cast by a few sections of society that certain intelligence agencies had been operating behind the scene and continuing to support the clerics of Lal Masjid could not be brushed aside.

The Jamaat leaders said that the operation against the mosque people also coincided with certain events of political importance and it needed to be probed if the regime had deliberately chosen July 3 for the operation when it delayed the same for more than six months. They said that the operation was intended to defuse in a situation when all the opposition parties were to meet in London. Similarly, the operation was planned at a time when the regime touched the lowest of its credibility after the Supreme Court had thrown out a government report in the case of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.

The Jamaat legislators also criticized the Lal Majid administration. They said the mosque leaders were justified neither in their approach of the issue nor their conduct. They said the mosque leaders should have helped in the release of women and children on the basis of their misery. “We still appeal to them to release all of them in the name of humanity”, they added.

Meanwhile, Jamaat’s acting amir Chaudhry Rehmat Elahi directed the party workers to provid relief goods to the people affected by flood and rains in Balochistan and Sindh. Presiding over a meeting at Mansoora, the party’s headquarters, he issued direction particularly to the Al-Khidmat Foundation to act with speed in affected areas.