NP newsroom
Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) chief Khadim Hussain Rizvi was arrested on Friday, when the Pakistani government ordered law enforcement to crack down against the far-right religious outfit throughout the country.
The verbally abusive cleric’s son confirmed that the police took him into ‘protective custody”. His son told the press that all district TLP leaders had been arrested too.
The fly on the wall has it that the arrests are a preemptive measure against the TLP fomenting trouble again in Pakistan in the prelude to Christmas by minority Christians throughout Pakistan, following the TLP’s violence on the issue of the Pakistani Supreme Court freeing blasphemy accused Aasia Noreen, mother of three young children.
However, sources say Rizvi was arrested because he and his disciples refused to accede to the governments requests to the TLP not demonstrate as it planned to on 25th November, significantly a Sunday, the day being associated with Christians in Pakistan although it is a regular end of the week.
Clerics in Pakistan and some other Islamic countries significantly demonstrate on the Islamic “sabbath” day Friday.
