Pak releases four detained workers of Jamaat-ud-Dawa

ISLAMABAD: Just days after launching a crackdown on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa after the UN banned it, Pakistani authorities have released four detained workers and removed police guards deployed at the home of a senior leader of the organisation.

Authorities in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir released the four detained workers of the Lashkar-e-Taiba's front organisation and also withdrew police guards posted at the home of the group's regional head, Maulana Abdul Aziz Alvi.

Chaudhry Imtiaz, the Deputy Commissioner of PoK capital Muzaffarabad, told the Dawn newspaper that police guards had been removed from Alvi's residence but he had been asked not to leave the area without informing the administration.

Alvi, who heads the PoK chapter of the Jamaat, was put under house arrest in his Karyan village on Thursday night.

"He had been placed under house arrest for security reasons. He is still under surveillance and cannot leave the station without prior intimation to the authorities concerned," Imtiaz said.

He said four persons taken into custody from a workshop run by the Jamaat in Muzaffarabad had been released because they were "merely mechanics". Imtiaz said there were no instructions from the federal government to detain the "regional or second-line leadership" of the Jamaat.

Earlier, Pakistan's foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi confirmed that Jamaat-run seminaries and schools would continue to function as usual.