Musharraf: Islamic Militancy Rising
Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf Acknowledges Rise In Militancy As 4 Police Detained
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf acknowledged that Islamic militancy was increasing across Pakistan and said tough measures were needed to counter it, as religious students from a pro-Taliban mosque abducted four police officers.
Musharraf made his remarks in an interview aired late Friday by the private Aaj television channel after four plainclothes officers were captured while patrolling in the capital, Islamabad, near the Lal Masjid mosque _ notorious for launching its own anti-vice campaign.
The president said that militancy in Pakistan was increasing, and "we need to strongly counter it." Musharraf did not elaborate.
His comments came as Abdul Rashid Ghazi, a cleric at Lal Masjid, said his students detained the officers because they were standing outside a seminary linked to the mosque despite an agreement with authorities that police would not be deployed there.
He said the abductions were in retaliation for intelligence agents detaining eight or nine of its students in the past two weeks. However, he said the police would be freed later Saturday because they were not intelligence agents.
Area police official Mohammed Dilshad confirmed the abductions, saying negotiations with Lal Masjid were under way, and the issue would hopefully be resolved "very soon."
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1) Musharraf: Islamic Militancy Rising
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