The government will free over 300 persons arrested for suspected Taliban links to meet the demand of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam to keep the Pakistan People’s Party-led coalition at the centre intact, according to a media report on Monday.
The government has also agreed to appoint JUI leader Maulana Mohammed Khan Sheerani of Balochistan as chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology when the incumbent retires this week.
The arrested persons, some of them suspected of being close associates of the Taliban terror network, are being released from jails in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province because they belong to the JUI led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the Express Tribune newspaper reported. The JUI has for long been threatening to pull out of the PPP-led coalition if its demands, including the release of workers arrested on terror charges, are not met. Over 300 JUI activists from the southern districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa were arrested by security agencies on charges of either being part of the Taliban network or active supporters of the militants.
The men were arrested from Kohat, Hangu, Tank, Dera Ismail Khan, Lakki Marwat, Swat, Buner, Dir and Mardan districts after security forces launched operations against the Taliban in these areas in 2009.
None of the arrested activists have been charged in a court of law so far. The JUI earlier forced the government to release around 150 of its workers arrested on similar charges in Kala Dhaka, a semi-tribal region of Mansehra district, earlier in 2010. It was not clear when the process of releasing the arrested JUI workers would start. A close associate of Fazlur Rehman told the Express Tribune that the release of workers topped the list of several demands the JUI had forwarded to the government as a condition for continuing support to the ruling coalition.
The government, the associate said, had given a green signal to meeting all these demands during a recent meeting between Fazlur Rehman and interior minister Rehman Malik. The final word came from PM Yousaf Raza Gilani, who met two top JUI leaders in Lahore on Sunday.