Pakistan mosque chief nabbed in burqa
Cleric reportedly arrested trying to escape besieged compound in a burqa
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 11:44 a.m. ET July 4, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The head of a radical Pakistani mosque at the center of a bloody stand-off with security forces has been arrested while trying to escape from the mosque in the capital Islamabad, police said.

The cleric, Abdul Aziz, was arrested while trying to slip out of the mosque while clad in a woman's burqa, said police chief Iftikhar Ahmed Chaudhry.

Earlier Wednesday, more than 1,000 followers surrendered as government troops with armored personnel carriers tightened their stranglehold on the complex a day after clashes killed at least 16 people, officials said.

But the leaders of the besieged Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, in the heart of Islamabad remained defiant as a deadline for their surrender passed.

By evening, the numbers of militants emerging from the mosque and a women's seminary was decreasing. The number remaining inside the complex was not known.

"They can be a few hundred, they can be more than that," Minister of Information Mohammed Ali Durrani told reporters.

One of those who decided to give up, 15-year-old Maryam Qayyeum, said many were not leaving the seminary.

'Only want martyrdom'
"They are happy. They only want martyrdom. They don't want to go home," she said.

The militants had been ordered to lay down their arms and surrender by 11 a.m. (1 a.m. ET).

All women and children will be granted amnesty but males involved in killings and other crimes as well as the top mosque leaders would face legal action, said Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim.

"The deadline has expired but we are not going to start any action immediately. We do not want bloodshed. We are reasonably sure that better sense will prevail," Pervez said.

He said the government is giving 5,000 rupees (U.S. $83) to each person who surrenders to help them return home.

As the deadline passed, the mosque's deputy leader Abdul Rashid Ghazi said he was prepared to talk with the government but added, "We will continue to defend ourselves."

Qayyeum said mosque leaders were not trying to stop students from giving up. But her mother, who had come to take her home said, "They are making speeches. They want to incite them."

Still hundreds inside?
Johar Ali, 20, who had come to the mosque to support the militants several days ago said there were still hundreds inside, but he did not see any suicide bombers the mosque leaders claim are ready to launch attacks.

The events came after a day of bloody clashes in Islamabad at the mosque between security forces and militants living inside the sprawling mosque, which has been at loggerheads with the government. The violence was sparked when male and female student followers of the mosque -- some of them armed -- rushed toward a police checkpoint.


The bloodshed added to a sense of crisis in Pakistan, where President Gen. Pervez Musharraf already faces emboldened militants near the Afghan border and a pro-democracy movement triggered by his botched attempt to fire the country's chief justice.

The mosque siege sparked street protests Tuesday in the cities of Lahore and Quetta organized by radical religious parties.

Soldiers, police attacked
Elsewhere, officials said a suicide car bomber rammed a vehicle into a Pakistan army convoy near the Afghan border, killing five soldiers and five civilians. And unidentified assailants fired a rocket at a police station in northwestern Pakistan, killing one officer and wounding four police.

It was not known if the two incidents Wednesday were linked to the mosque crisis.

A senior government spokesman, Anwar Mahmood, said the official casualty toll in Islamabad had risen to 16, but declined to give a breakdown of the victims. Earlier, the government said they included militants, innocent bystanders, a journalist and members of the security forces.

Ghazi told the AP that 20 of his students had been killed by security forces, including two young men as they were climbing to the top of the mosque for morning prayers Wednesday.

A young woman was also shot and wounded on the roof of the women's seminary, he said.

"She was shot by sniper fire. They are shooting directly at us," he said in a telephone interview. Ghazi said there were no negotiations under way with the government to end the standoff.

After a meeting of top officials early Wednesday including Musharraf, Deputy Interior Minister Zafar Warriach said the government had imposed an immediate curfew on the area around the mosque.

Warriach said authorities had run out of patience after a six-month standoff.

"The government has decided that those people from the madrassa who are defaming Pakistan and Islam will face an operation," Warriach said.


The violence dramatically deepened a standoff at the fortress-like mosque, whose clerics have challenged the government by sending students from the mosque's madrassas to kidnap alleged prostitutes and police in a Taliban-style anti-vice campaign.

Some accuse intelligence agencies of encouraging the crisis to justify prolonging military rule -- a conspiracy theory with considerable traction in Pakistan's intrigue-ridden politics.

Plans for Musharraf, a close U.S. ally who seized power in a 1999 coup, to ask lawmakers for a new five-year term this fall are in doubt because of rising opposition.

Yet the general's failure to crack down on the clerics has dented his credentials as a bulwark against extremism -- diminishing his worth to Washington, his key international backer.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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