Pakistan booked a cleric for sedition and terror charges after he hoisted the Afghan Taliban flag--the third time since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan-- on the rooftop of a seminary he runs in the country’s capital Islamabad. 

Maulana Abdul Aziz, the head of Islamabad’s infamous Red Mosque, his collaborators as well as seminary students were booked under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) and different sections of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), reported Dawn newspaper. Since 21 August, the report claimed, they have hoisted the flag thrice. 

Red Mosque, situated just a few kilometres from the country’s parliament in Islamabad, has for years had a troubled relationship with the government, with the seminary openly challenging the state, and imposing its own what they call Sharia laws in the parts of the capital. 

A video of the altercation that took place between Maulana Abdul and police officials went viral on social media platforms, showing the former challenging the latter of “dire consequences” if remove the flag and harass the students of the seminary. He has also been seen telling the officials that the Afghan Taliban will come and teach them a lesson. 

The deputy commissioner of Islamabad police later tweeted, informing that the flag was removed from the top of the building. 

Maulana Abdul Aziz, a hardliner Islamist radical preacher and the head of Red Mosque and a seminary nearby, named Jamia Hafsa Madrassa, openly calls for the imposition of Sharia laws in Pakistan and calls for the overthrow of the Pakistan government. The students and followers of the leader in the past were involved in violent clashes with the authorities. 

The tension peaked in 2007 when then-president General Parvez Musharraf ordered the army’s special forces to storm the Red Mosque compound, resulting in the death of 153 people. 

Experts have long been warning of the resurgence of radical Islamist groups and movements in Pakistan, emboldened by the Taliban victory in neighboring Afghanistan. The TTP, also knows as the Pakistan Taliban, has already dramatically escalated attacks against security forces in the country’s northwestern region. 
  
(SAM)