Pakistan put the leader of a banned extremist organisation under house arrest
Pakistan police puts extremist leader under house arrest
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan put the leader of a banned extremist organisation under house arrest on Thursday for inciting sectarian hatred, police said, just days after gunmen killed 29 Shiite Muslims.
Malik Ishaq, head of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, was released on bail in July after nearly 14 years behind bars over his alleged role in numerous sectarian murders and accusations he masterminded an attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team.
Ishaq was now under house arrest for 10 days in the city of Rahim Yar Khan, 550 kilometres (350 miles) southwest of the capital Islamabad, police said.
"Ishaq has been confined to his house... on the orders of the Punjab government after growing tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims," district police official Sohail Zafar Chattha told AFP.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is regarded as the most extreme Sunni terror group in the Sunni Muslim-majority country and is accused of killing hundreds of Shiite Muslims after its emergence in the early 1990s.
It was banned by then president Pervez Musharraf in 1999.
Ishaq's sermons had led to violence in parts of the country and raised sectarian tensions, another official said, but did not explicitly link him to the Shiite killings on Tuesday, the deadliest such sectarian attack in a year.
In a brutal assault, gunmen killed 26 Shiite pilgrims after ordering them off their bus in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, before other attacks killed three relatives travelling to collect the bodies.
Authorities in Baluchistan blamed the killings on Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
Rights groups say a persistent lack of action from the government has emboldened sectarian militant groups, blamed for the deaths of thousands in past years.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi played a key role in the 2002 kidnap and murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl and in twin failed assassination bids on key US ally Musharraf in December 2003.
Ishaq was arrested in 1997 and is implicated in 45 cases, mostly murder.
He was accused of masterminding, from behind bars, the 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore which wounded seven players and an assistant coach, and killed eight Pakistanis.
The attacks saw Pakistan stripped of its right to co-host this year's cricket World Cup and the country has since hosted no top foreign teams.
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan put the leader of a banned extremist organisation under house arrest on Thursday for inciting sectarian hatred, police said, just days after gunmen killed 29 Shiite Muslims.
Malik Ishaq, head of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, was released on bail in July after nearly 14 years behind bars over his alleged role in numerous sectarian murders and accusations he masterminded an attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team.
Ishaq was now under house arrest for 10 days in the city of Rahim Yar Khan, 550 kilometres (350 miles) southwest of the capital Islamabad, police said.
"Ishaq has been confined to his house... on the orders of the Punjab government after growing tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims," district police official Sohail Zafar Chattha told AFP.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is regarded as the most extreme Sunni terror group in the Sunni Muslim-majority country and is accused of killing hundreds of Shiite Muslims after its emergence in the early 1990s.
It was banned by then president Pervez Musharraf in 1999.
Ishaq's sermons had led to violence in parts of the country and raised sectarian tensions, another official said, but did not explicitly link him to the Shiite killings on Tuesday, the deadliest such sectarian attack in a year.
In a brutal assault, gunmen killed 26 Shiite pilgrims after ordering them off their bus in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, before other attacks killed three relatives travelling to collect the bodies.
Authorities in Baluchistan blamed the killings on Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
Rights groups say a persistent lack of action from the government has emboldened sectarian militant groups, blamed for the deaths of thousands in past years.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi played a key role in the 2002 kidnap and murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl and in twin failed assassination bids on key US ally Musharraf in December 2003.
Ishaq was arrested in 1997 and is implicated in 45 cases, mostly murder.
He was accused of masterminding, from behind bars, the 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore which wounded seven players and an assistant coach, and killed eight Pakistanis.
The attacks saw Pakistan stripped of its right to co-host this year's cricket World Cup and the country has since hosted no top foreign teams.
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