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Pakistani Clerics Demand Action Against FBI Agents
Islamic clerics in Pakistan asked police on Thursday to register a complaint against U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents for carrying out raids on their seminaries to hunt for al Qaeda suspects. But Pakistani police described as "baseless" the allegations by the clerics and several witnesses that the raids took place. "There is no proof that any raid took place or there were foreigners involved in a raid," Kaleem Imam, Senior Superintendent of Police in the capital Islamabad, told Reuters."In fact, there is no proof that I am even talking to you." Pakistan denies that the FBI is involved in raids on the homes of Pakistani suspects, despite numerous witness accounts to the contrary. The clerics insisted that the mosque and seminary were raided and that foreign agents were present. "I demand that a First Information Report be registered against these people because they were from the FBI," said the application from Abdul Razzaq Haideri, prayer leader of Abdullah bin Masood mosque in Islamabad. Haideri said in his complaint seen by Reuters that his mosque was raided at about midnight on Wednesday.Hardline Islamic parties have been deeply angered by frequent reports about the involvement of FBI agents in raids on suspected Islamic militants in Pakistan. They must be doing a good job, whoever they are. The six-party Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal Islamic coalition staged nationwide protest rallies earlier this month against the United States and the threat of war on Iraq. They also criticized the role the FBI had in Pakistan in hunting suspected terrorists. If they didn't have the U.S. to protest against, they'd find someone else, cause that's what they do for a living. In a separate incident cleric Maulana Fida Mohammad told reporters he was asleep when a raid took place late on Monday at his seminary and that his cook was taken away by the authorities. "I saw there were some (people) of reddish color who were speaking English, and others who were translating for them," Mohammad said, explaining that they were asking questions about al Qaeda and Arabs. Red FBI agents? Native American, sunburned, or space alien red? Khaista Gul, the cook, told reporters he was unable to see any faces because he was blindfolded, but heard people talking in English. He said he was kept in a room where some people interrogated him in Urdu about links between al Qaeda and the seminary. Maulana Abdur Rasheed Ghazi, a prominent Muslim cleric in Islamabad, told reporters at the police station that the FBI's activities in Pakistan were intolerable. Islamabad and nearby Rawalpindi city have several hundred big and small Islamic seminaries. It's where they grow their major export crop. "I have made it very clear that no FBI agent has ever accompanied any Pakistani agency," Interior Minister Makhdoom Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat told reporters this week. But officials admit there are a few U.S. intelligence agents in Pakistan helping track down suspects using high-tech surveillance techniques. Monitoring those satellite phones al-Queda is so fond of. Posted by: Steve 2003-01-16 |
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