PESHAWAR, Jan 27: About 2,000 supporters of Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban rallied here on Sunday to denounce crackdown on radical Islamic groups in the country and US treatment of prisoners from the Afghan war.

The rally was the first show of strength by the groups since Gen Pervez Musharraf announced on Jan 12 a string of measures to combat rising militancy and sectarianism.

Leaders of the rally said they had the right to wage jihad and warned Musharraf they could force him from power at any time.

The protesters, who gathered at a football ground in Peshawar, near the Afghan border, also denounced what they called the inhuman and insulting treatment of Al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners by US forces, and demanded a halt to the “act of barbarism”.

The United States, which has moved 158 of its Taliban and Al-Qaeda prisoners to a jail in Cuba, has been accused by human rights groups and some politicians at home and abroad of treating the prisoners inhumanely — charges denied by Washington.

A statement issued at the end of the rally said restrictions Musharraf imposed this month on mosques and madaris would be resisted and called on activists to gather for another protest in Lahore on Feb 3.

“We can remove Musharraf whenever we want to,” Syed Munawar Hassan, acting chief of the Jamaat-i-Islami, told the rally.

Nearly 2,000 people, most of them members of the banned groups, have been detained in the clampdown and some 650 group offices were shut and sealed.

Maulana Samiul Haq, head of the 35-party pro-Taliban Pakistan-Afghanistan Defence Council, told the crowd Muslims would continue to wage jihad against non-Muslims in places such as Chechnya, Palestine and Afghanistan.—Reuters