Pakistan's mosque students refuse to free police

Pakistani authorities were trying on Saturday to secure the release of four policemen who radical Islamic students detained in Islamabad in their latest challenge to the government's authority.

Taliban-supporting clerics and students at the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, have undertaken a series of provocative stunts since January to press for various demands. They have even threatened suicide bomb attacks in support of their cause.

The government, struggling with a judicial crisis that is sapping its popularity, has tried to mollify the radical Islamists and said last month all issues with them had been settled amicably.

But on Friday, religious students apprehended four plainclothes policemen outside the fortified mosque compound in a central Islamabad neighbourhood and were holding them at their religious school, police said.

A senior cleric at the mosque, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, said the students were demanding the release of religious students who he said authorities detained last month. Police said they were trying to secure their colleagues' release.

"We have registered cases against those involved," Inspector General Chaudhry Iftikhar Ahmed told Reuters.

"Let's see how events unfold and then we will take a decision," Ahmed said after late-night negotiations ended in failure. The behaviour of the students, reminiscent of the Taliban in Afghanistan, coupled with the authorities' failure to rein them in, has dismayed many residents of the country's cosmopolitan capital.

In January, female religious students occupied a children's library next to their religious school, to protest against a campaign by city authorities to remove mosques built illegally on state land.

The government stopped the campaign but the students still occupy the library. Later, students went around video shops, urging shopkeepers to stop selling films deemed obscene. They burned a huge pile of videos and video discs on a city street.

Students also abducted three women they accused of running a brothel and forced them to confess in front of reporters before releasing them. They also briefly abducted two policemen and seized two police vehicles around the same time.

The clerics and students, who are also well known for their anti-U.S. stand, are demanding the government rebuild several mosques demolished in the campaign against land encroachment and enforce Islamic laws.

The mosque's top cleric, Abdul Aziz, last month threatened to unleash suicide bombers if the government used force to block their efforts to push for strict Islamic law.

Reuters