KARACHI, Jan 9: The Jamaat-i-Islami has demanded of the government to immediately release family members of a woman member of its central Shura and MMA leader, Sabiha Shahid, who were picked up in Gulshan-i-Maymar in a pre-dawn raid on Thursday.

The raid was conducted by Pakistani law-enforcement agencies in which the American FBI also participated, Prof Ghafoor Ahmed, deputy chief of the Jamaat, told a news conference.

“We had never dreamt of any such raids in Karachi, involving FBI officials,” he said.

If these people were not released immediately, nationwide protests would be launched, he warned.

He urged the Supreme Court to take suo-motu action on “unauthorized raids” in Karachi without any warrant by law-enforcement agencies and the detention of “innocent Pakistanis.”

He said the government should produce the detained persons in court, refrain from conducting such raids in the city and ask FBI officials to leave the country.

Talking to reporters about the detention of Sabiha Ahmed’s family, he told the news conference that she was away from her house on Thursday morning when more than 2,000 personnel of law-enforcement agencies along with FBI men besieged her two-storey house in Gulshan-i-Maymar and reportedly picked up two foreigners at separate sections of the house.

The law-enforcement personnel also picked up Sabiha Ahmed’s husband, former hockey Olympian Dr Shahid Ali Khan, their two sons, a daughter, an adopted small (toddler) son, a nephew and a housemaid and shifted them to an unknown place.

“So far, nobody knows their whereabouts and why they have been picked up. The government has not even admitted to picking up seven Pakistanis,” he said.

“It seems that practically the FBI is ruling the country. The Sindh governor had assured me that citizens would be free and that the government would provide them protection. On the contrary, we feel that we are living in an American colony,” he said.—PPI