Lal Masjid goes wireless

LAHORE: Despite having compelled the Musharraf regime to accept all their demands, two fanatic clerics of the infamous Lal Masjid in Islamabad, already running a Shariah Court, have now equipped their students with latest wireless communication system, assigning them different zones of the federal capital to keep a check on the movement of the security agencies.

According to sources in the intelligence agencies, the Lal Masjid administration has decided to equip their students with latest communication system at a time when the government is holding talks with the brother of Lal Masjid cleric. The ruling Pakistan Muslim League President, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, is acting as the chief broker. With the help of latest communication system, the sources said, it has become easy for the individuals of the Lal Masjid to impart immediate information to their administration about any movement of law enforcement agencies.

The sources said that the wireless technology has been acquired to counter a possible commando operation by the security agencies to get hold of the mosque in the heart of Islamabad. The administrator of the Lal Masjid, Maulana Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, had already warned that their student are equipped with licensed automatic weapons and any commando action could lead to a spate of suicide bombings across Pakistan.

Approached for comments, a spokesperson of the Lal Masjid said that they have got permission from the Frequency Allocation Board in Islamabad to use the wireless communication system and the board had allocated them a separate frequency. The nearly three-month-old ongoing crisis in Islamabad, created by the two cleric brothers, has already taken another unpredictable turn although the government keeps underplaying it.

The government interlocutor with the Lal Masjid clerics, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, had claimed recently that the crisis has been resolved after the government accepted nine out of the ten demands of the Lal Masjid administration. He had further announced that the tenth demand of the clerics about reconstruction of the demolished mosques, which were built illegally on the Capital Development Authority (CDA) land, has also been accepted and the mosques would be reconstructed as soon as the CDA is able to earmark some reasonable plot of land.

In short, the government has condoned all the illegal and criminal acts of the clerics and their followers who continue to carry on their extremist agenda with impunity.