JI concerned over Karachi violence

LAHORE: Ameer, Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan, Syed Munawar Hasan, has expressed deep concern over the alarming increase in target killings in Karachi and said the rulers were protecting the killers, extortionists and the drug mafia.

In a press statement here on Sunday, he said that over a dozen of people were being gunned down in Karachi every day on the average.

There was neither the writ of the government nor the law enforcers on the roads in the port city.

The target killers were doing their job freely and then dispersed from the scene as if they never existed. It was unfortunate, that the government had allowed complete license to the murderers, target killers and criminals because of its vested interests, he added.

He said the administration and the agencies were unable to apprehend the killers because they enjoyed the protection of the people in power.

He said in the past, the Interior Minister Rehman Malik had been giving the news of arrest of one or two killers but nobody knew their fate because their patrons got them freed from the clutches of law.

Hasan said that recently, the Supreme Court had taken serious notice of the release of 35 major target killers on parole and ordered their arrest, but the rulers immediately whisked them out of the country.

If the rulers themselves gave protection to the law breakers, how peace could be restored, he asked.