LANDI KOTAL (Khyber Agency), June 5: Armed activists of Lashkar-i-Islami kidnapped the amir of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, Bara, Maulana Abdul Latif, on Sunday evening.

Sources said that men of the Lashkar, travelling in pick-ups, entered a mosque in Kohi locality in Bara and forcibly took away Maulana Latif. The Maulana belonged to Malikdinkhel tribe and was operating a madressah in Kohi.

It was also learnt that Maulana Abdul Latif was shifted to the Gogrina village in the Bazaar sub-tehsil where supporters of Mufti Munir Shakir have established their new base after they were expelled from Bara in March.

Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed amir of Lashkar-i-Islami, Haji Mangal Bagh, has imposed a ban on interest-based loan system and declared it un-Islamic. The system had been in practice in Bara for more than three decades.

Mangal Bagh in one of his speeches broadcast over his FM radio station from Gogrina had also warned to punish those who did not pray five times a day. However, he did not specify the punishment.