One of Pakistan’s responses to the urban terrorist attacks in its borders has been to raid a Hizb ut-Tahrir ’seminar’ that was being held in Islamabad to, as a HuT spokesman described, “mobilize people against the American raj and Waziristan operations.”
…police arrested dozens of suspected members of the outlawed Sunni Islamist Hizb-ut-Tahrir organisation following raids in an upscale neighbourhood of Islamabad.
“Hizb-ut-Tahrir is a peaceful political party which was holding a seminar at a residence to condemn the South Waziristan operation. We will continue to make our protest,” the group’s chief spokesman, Tehrir Naveed Butt, said in a statement.
Over at HuT’s website, the full Youtube statement by the group’s spokesman has been posted in English.
Interestingly, Hut’s website also has an announcement that a nuclear scientist was among those arrested. His name is Rizwan Aleem, and he is a PhD candidate at the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology (GIKI). I’ve blogged a few times about this illustrious learning institution when the Taliban were about to take over the district where it is located in the Northwest Frontier Province, and made some predictions about how campus life would change, the institution’s reputation would be affected, and how donations might drop off.
Given HuT’s approving comments about al Shabaab-style shariah, Aleem must have disapproved of the campus life (gender mixing) that others seemed so proud to have posted pictures of on GIKI’s Facebook page. Anyway, Aleem’s future is in doubt now: “Sources say the Hizbut Tahrir activists were likely to be handed over to intelligence agencies for further interrogation.”
