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150 detained ahead of Lahore rally: Qazi
LAHORE: Some 150 people have been arrested on the eve of a major protest in Lahore over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed said on Saturday. The police denied his claims.
"He's been drinking again!"
“The police have arrested some 150 of our workers from mosques, madrassas and homes after raids ahead of Sunday’s protest rally in Lahore,” he was quoted as saying by AFP. Police contested the figure and said that only seven to eight people had been detained in connection with rioting last week.

Anjum Herlad Gill and Qamar Jabbar add: However, government officials told Daily Times that the police had arrested 50 MMA activists, and had already detained 76 activists, mostly of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance before last Sunday’s protests. A few Jamaat Dawatul Irshad activists were among those arrested.
A drop in the bucket, but welcome all the same ...
Ahmed said today’s rally in Lahore would go ahead despite a government ban on protests and that he would lead the rally. “I will go out despite heavy police siege and lead the rally in person,” he told reporters at the headquarters of his Jamaat-e-Islami party in Mansura.

However, the government sources said that Ahmed was under house arrest while the entry into Lahore of the other MMA heavyweight, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, had been banned for seven days. The entry of other opposition leaders, including Raja Zafarul Haq, Imran Khan, Sajid Mir and Sajjid Naqvi, has also been banned, Online reported. “We will not allow them to stage a procession on any main road. They are free to hold rallies at Minar-e-Pakistan,” one official said.

A senior government official told AFP that Ahmed had refused to receive his detention orders on Friday which had been pasted on a wall near the main gate of his party headquarters. “If he defies the detention order of ban on rallies, police will have to arrest him,” he said.
I can only hope he resists arrest ...
The Punjab government has imposed Section 144 in Lahore and vowed to crack down on any violent protestors. Twenty companies of the Rangers have been deployed in the city along with contingents of regular and reserve Punjab Police.
Posted by: Steve White 2006-02-26
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=143814