One of Pakistan's main fundamentalist parties is crying foul after the military authorities arrested a key provincial member for alleged corruption, a report said Saturday.
Haji Ghulam Ali was arrested by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) under draconian anti-corruption rules which allow for detention without charge for up to 90 days, the News daily reported.
Ali was a prominent member of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI), a fundamentalist Islamic party which earlier this week organised a mass rally of Islamists in the semi-tribal North West Frontier Province (NWFP), it said.
"After the impressive Deoband Conference, the government has realised that the JUI has a huge following in NWFP and has, therefore, started targeting us here (in NWFP)," JUI chief Maulana Fazlur Rahman was quoted as saying.
More than 200,000 Islamists and religious scholars from around Pakistan and abroad gathered at the three-day rally near the NWFP capital Peshawar earlier this week.
Marking the 150th anniversary of the Deoband school of Sunni Islam, the event quickly became a forum for local fundamentalist leaders to demand jihad (holy war) against the West and the implementation of Sharia law in Pakistan.
It also heard messages from indicted terrorist Osama bin Laden, one of America's most wanted men, and the chief of the puritanical Taliban militia which rules most of neighbouring Afghanistan – ISLAMABAD (AFP)
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