Banned outfit: Noose tightens on Hizb activists

Security agencies have started moving against activists of the banned Hizb-ut-Tahrir outfit.

ISLAMABAD:


Security agencies have started moving against activists of the banned Hizb-ut-Tahrir outfit, sources told The Express Tribune on Thursday.


Many of the activists have gone underground after raids on their houses in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

The arrests are said to have been made both before and after the detention of Brigadier Ali Khan and four army majors earlier this week, for suspected links with the Hizb.

The Hizb’s cadre, comprising professionals like engineers, doctors and educated youth, had been distributing leaflets, brochures and pasting stickers in public places calling for action over the past month.

The Hizb also launched a similar campaign when the US called for a full-scale military assault on North Waziristan, urging the people to resist. The HT kept in touch with media outlets via SMS
on the terrorist attack on
the PNS Mehran in Karachi, accusing the US of masterminding the attack.


It regularly issued press releases urging people to “topple the government (and clear it) of traitors, conspirators and the American agents”.

The organisation also organised rallies “for establishing the rule of Khilafah in Pakistan and other parts of the Muslim world”.

Meanwhile, a press release issued by the Hizb said that officials of a secret agency had “kidnapped” two of its activists named Naeem Younas and Fahad from Rawalpindi last week. Naeem was arrested distributing a leaflet on the Abbottabad incursion, while Fahad was arrested from his house in the Bahria Town.

“(Plainclothesmen) took Younas, a telecom engineer to an unknown location,” the press release said.

Security officials, the Hizb said, started rounding up its people after it issued a pamphlet on the US raid in Abbottabad in which Osama bin Laden was killed.

According to the Hizb, it has filed a writ petition against the kidnapping of its activists and it plans to hold demonstration in Islamabad at Zero Point outside the press offices.



Published in The Express Tribune, June 24th, 2011.

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