Radical Pakistan party releases 11 police hostages after anti-France protests
19 April, 2021
Eleven Pakistani cops seized by supporters of a radical group within their campaign to find the French ambassador expelled have already been released, officials said on Monday (Apr 19).
The officers were grabbed as hostages on Sunday by supporters of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) during violent protests in Lahore.
Video circulating on social media - and confirmed unofficially by police as genuine - showed some of them bloodied and bruised, with bandages around their heads.
Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the police have been released early Monday after "negotiations" with the TLP, that your government banned the other day after effectively labelling it a terrorist organisation.
The officers had been held at a TLP mosque stronghold in Lahore, which is now filled with supporters and surrounded by police.
"Negotiations have already been started with TLP; the first round completed successfully," said Rashid in a video on Twitter.
"They have released 11 policemen who were made hostages."
He said a second round of negotiations would take place later Monday, although it is not clear what they'll discuss.
Previously the TLP had set an Apr 20 deadline for the expulsion of the French ambassador.
The group has been behind an anti-France campaign for months since President Emmanuel Macron defended the proper of Charlie Hebdo magazine to republish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad - an act deemed blasphemous by many Muslims.
PROTESTS PARALYSE CITIES
Last week the embassy in Pakistan advised its nationals to leave the united states - a call that appears to have gone largely unheeded.
"The TLP persons have gone in the Mosque and the police also have stepped back," said Rashid.
"Hopefully, all of those other issues will be settled in the next round."
Rioting has rocked the united states for the past week since the leader of the TLP was detained in Lahore after calling for a march on the administrative centre.
The protests have paralysed cities and led to the deaths of six policemen.
TLP leaders say many of the party's supporters were killed in Sunday's clashes.
"We won't bury them before French ambassador is kicked out," Allama Muhammad Shafiq Amini, a TLP leader in the town, said in a video statement.
Prime Minister Imran Khan's government has struggled to bring TLP to heel over the years, but this week announced an outright ban against the group - effectively labelling it a terrorist outfit.
Still, on Saturday he suggested the party hadn't been banned because of its ideology, but instead its methods.
"Let me make clear to persons here & abroad: Our govt only took action against TLP under our anti-terrorist law if they challenged the writ of the state and used street violence & attacking the general public & law enforcers," he tweeted.
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