ISLAMABAD: Haroon Rashid, son of former Lal Masjid naib khateeb Abdul Rashid Ghazi, come into the limelight in 2013 when he approached the courts to register an FIR against former military ruler, retired General Pervez Musharraf, for launching a military operation against the Lal Masjid in 2007.

Haroon was 12 years old at the time of the Lal Masjid operation. After matriculating from a local school, he enrolled in a seminary in Sector F-6/4, where he is currently engaged in the 8-year religious programme, Dars-i-Nizami.

He has also cleared his intermediate exams and has a bachelors degree from the Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU). Haroon currently resides in a government flat in Sector F-6/4, which was allotted to his father while he served at the Lal Masjid.

When Haroon’s counsel Tariq Asad appeared before the court in 2013, he claimed that Haroon was very young when Abdul Rashid Ghazi was killed in July 2007, which was why he did not approach the police for the registration of an FIR.

The matter was heard by an additional district and sessions judge, Rafaqat Awan, who dismissed the petition on April 24, 2013 with the remarks that after a lapse of over 7 years, the petition was filed to gain cheap publicity.

The judge, however, was killed in March the following year when terrorists attacked the district courts in Islamabad.

It was in July of 2013, when Justice Noorul Haq N. Qureshi of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), disposing of a petition filed by Haroon, ordered the police to register an FIR against Gen Musharraf.

Musharraf remained under arrest in the Abdul Rashid Ghazi murder case, but later was granted bail when the police, in their interim challan, declared him ‘innocent’ on the basis of weak evidence.

However, Gen Musharraf is still on trial, which is pending before an additional district and sessions judge of Islamabad.

A spokesperson of the Lal Masjid-led Shuhda Foundation Trust, in a statement, claimed that the police arrested Haroon in order to force him to withdraw the complaint against Gen Musharraf.

The statement claimed that in 2004, police had implicated Abdul Rashid Ghazi in an identical case as they recovered ‘fake’ weapons from the vehicle. According to the statement, Ghazi was later acquitted by the courts.

Published in Dawn, September 24th , 2015

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