A pro-Afghan Taliban Pakistani cleric was placed under house arrest yesterday by the authorities to stop him from leading nationwide anti-US rallies, his party and police said.
Heavily armed police and paramilitary troops were stationed at the house of Maulana Fazal-ur Rehman, leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, or the Party of Islamic Cleric, in Dera Ismail Khan, around 200km south of the northern border city of Peshawar, according to Abdul Jalil Jan, the deputy secretary of the group.
Police and paramilitary troops are patrolling the narrow dusty streets of his home town, Jan said. The move came one day after Rehman led a noisy, four-hour protest by several thousand people here.
Rehman told the crowd that if the US tried to land planes in Pakistan, they would be destroyed.
Dawal Khan, senior superintendent of police, said Rehman was placed under indefinite house arrest on orders of the provincial government. He gave no other details.
Pakistan's military-led government has pledged support to the US in its war against terrorism following the deadly terrorist strikes at the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon on Sept. 11.
Rehman is one of the key Islamic leaders opposing the government's stand and his supporters have been holding nationwide demonstrations in an attempt to force a change in policy.
"The arrest has been made at the behest of America," Jan said. "But it won't dampen our spirits. Our protests would continue."
The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam is a key supporter of the Taliban, who control 95 percent of Afghanistan. Rehman has been fiercely critical of Pakistan's President General Pervez Mu-sharraf's promise to help the US in its crackdown on the alleged terrorist network being run from neighboring Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden, chief suspect of the Sept. 11 attacks, lives in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban.
Despite intense international pressure and threats of strikes, the Taliban have refused to turn over bin Laden, calling him a hero of Islam for his role in Afghan resistance during 1980s when the forces of former Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan.
Rehman's party, which also espouses a Taliban-like system of Islam, is urging the Muslims to wage jihad, or holy war, if the US attacks Afghanistan.
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