Multan, Apr 21: The former leader of an outlawed Islamic militant group, elected to Pakistan's parliament from jail last year, announced today he has formed a new Islamic party. Maulana Azam Tariq's inclusion of former office holders from his banned Sipah-e-Sahaba (SSP) organisation in his new Millat-e-Islamia party has immediately drawn criticism that he was reviving SSP, blamed for hundreds of Shiite killings over the past two decades. "Millat-i-Islamia is a politico-religious party which has been formed to struggle for the enforcement of Islamic order ... And to check sectarian killings," Tariq told a news agency in the central Pakistani city of Multan, near his seat of Jhang.
"It will not be a sectarian or purely religious party, it will be a political party."
SSP was one of the leading organisations of extremists from the Sunni code of Islam, practised by the majority of Pakistan's 138 million Muslims, until it was banned by President Pervez Musharraf in January 2002.
It was accused of murdering hundreds of activists from the minority Shiite community in sectarian violence that has blighted the Islamic republic since the 1980s. Tariq himself was accused of dozens of murders but was never convicted. He denied that he or SSP had killed Shiites.
Local Shiite leader Allama Sajid Ali Naqvi called Tari's new party "new wine in an old bottle" because of the inclusion of top SSP figures, and said he feared it would be a purely sectarian organisation. Bureau Report