ISLAMABAD: Lal Masjid is back in the limelight. The mosque echoed in the Senate debate earlier this week while the Supreme Court is likely to hear a case of its missing people from September 15.

MQM Senator Tahir Mashhadi recently slammed the authorities for not conducting an operation against Lal Masjid and demanded that the government clarify its stance.

He had moved an adjournment motion in the Senate, seeking a debate on the crackdown on Lal Masjid elements, after intelligence agencies confirmed its links with militant outfits such as Isis. However, the adjournment motion was not accepted by the acting chairman Senate, Ahmed Hassan. Nonetheless, the MQM senator managed to speak on the issue briefly in the house.

Motion seeking crackdown on mosque rejected in Senate, SC will take up a case of its missing persons from next week

Oddly, in the same week, the well-wishers of Lal Masjid, fighting various court cases under the banner of ‘Shuhada Foundation’ filed an appeal with the apex court for the recovery of two of their workers who they claimed have “disappeared”. The hearing of the cases related to missing persons is scheduled to start from September 15, after a gap of more than two years.

Speaking to Dawn, Mashhadi said: “We have heard from various sources, including the media, that Lal Masjid members are being picked by agencies. My demand is the government should come out and give a clear picture of what is going on.”

Alleging that the government and other relevant authorities were trying to conceal facts, he said: “This is a serious issue. If it cannot be disclosed in the open, at least an in-camera briefing should be given to the parliamentarians as we have been told earlier that there were contacts between terror outfits and the followers of hardline cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz.”

It appeared that the MQM parliamentarian wanted the state to come clean on its stand towards Lal Masjid and go after it publicly instead of carrying out a ‘secret crackdown’ on Lal Masjid and the Ghazi Force.

The comments made by MQM parliamentarian also questioned the December 2015 claim of Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan that there was no case registered against Lal Masjid Khateeb Maulana Abdul Aziz - so no action could be taken against him.

His statement also brought forward civil society activists, including late Khurrum Zaki and Jibran Nasir, who presented copies of an FIR and other police reports against Maulana Aziz. Similarly, Senator Farhatullah Babar presented some legal documents in the upper house, asserting that the cleric was an absconder.

Meanwhile, Senator Mashhadi said: “There are too many grey areas – if there is nothing why they are being harassed regularly and if there are issues with Lal Masjid why are these people free to operate in the capital.”

Incidentally, Maulana Aziz has taken the statement by the MQM senator on its face value and said the agencies had launched secret operations against all segments of society and expressed sympathies with MQM. “What they are doing with MQM is not fair,” he said. According to the cleric, there are more cases of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings now than they were during the Musharraf tenure.

“The crackdown targets madressahs of all sects and the cases of missing people are on the rise – be it religious persons belonging to the Deobandi sect, Barelvi, Shia or Ahle Hadis as well as Baloch nationalists and MQM workers.”

He claimed that six of Lal Masjid affiliated people had gone missing in the last one year from Rawalpindi and Islamabad while two were killed in a police encounter in Okara in July this year.

“Only after the pictures appeared in the press, did we recognise Yasibur Rehman, a security guard of Jamia Hafsa, and Hafiz Saeedur Rehman, who worked in the printing press, and realised that they had been killed in Okara,” he said. He explained that the two men had been picked in August 2015.

At the same time, the Lal Masjid management claims that two brothers, both teachers at Jamia Hafsa - Sahibur Rehman and Masoodur Rehman - have been missing for more than a year.

The mosque administration has been claiming enforced disappearances for some time. For example, Salman Shahid, a son-in-law of Maulana Aziz, went missing on June 24, 2015, and came back in January 2016. Similarly, Mohammad Usman, a caretaker of one of Jamia Hafsa’s branches, went missing in June 2015 and returned in September 2015.

Maulana Tayyab Sareen, who worked in the IT department of Jamia Hafsa, went missing in January 2015 from Rawalpindi and Maulana Abdul Qayum, who is the nazim of Jamia Hafsa, went missing from Aabpara on December 14, 2015.

“We understand that they are in the custody of agencies because some officials have hinted so,” said Maulana Aziz.

Chairman Shuhada Foundation, Tariq Asad Advocate, has filed an application in the apex court for the recovery of Maulana Abdul Qayum and Maulana Tayyab that has been accepted and clubbed with 97 other cases related to persons with enforced disappearances.

It has now been decided by the Supreme Court that all the 97 cases of missing persons will be heard by a three-member bench from September 15.”

Published in Dawn, September 11th, 2016