Reports: Radical clerics set to free kidnapped police in Islamabad

Two kidnapped policemen at the heart of a standoff in Islamabad between radical Islamic clerics and Pakistani military forces are set to be released, according to news reports.

ABC Radio Australia writes that the chief of Islamabad's Lal Masjid mosque, or Red Mosque, said that the clerics would soon release the Pakistani policemen. Bloomberg reports that Pakistani officials said that the policemen have already been freed. The pair, along with two other policemen released earlier, have been held at the mosque since Friday, when they were seized by students from a madrassah, or religious school.

"The Red Mosque clerics have released all the policemen they had taken hostage from outside their seminaries," Tariq Azeem, the junior minister for information and broadcasting, said in a telephone interview today. "There was no need for use of force."

Security forces were withdrawn from around the mosque known as the Lal Masjid, he said. Students and clerics had held two police officers at the seminary since May 18.

The policemen's release defuses a potentially violent situation, as the mosque had been facing a raid by Pakistani forces, reports Indian broadcaster New Dehli Television Limited. Some 10,000 troops had taken positions around the mosque in preparation to free the policemen, NDTV writes, but Pakistan decided to hold off on using force, due to the high likelihood of bloodshed.

Voice of America reports that the four policemen were seized Friday from the main road outside the Lal Masjid mosque, according to Interior Ministry officials. The mosque's clerics accuse the officers of performing undercover surveillance there, in violation of a previous agreement between the mosque and the government that police would avoid the area. Voice of America notes that the mosque's leaders have been at odds with the government for several months.

Its top clerics have vowed to impose Taleban-style Sharia law in the capital and have threatened massive suicide bomb attacks if the government tries to interfere.

Students from the mosque's religious seminaries swept through one of Islamabad's main market areas last month, warning shop owners against selling music or movies.

Hundreds of students have also been occupying a nearby children's library since January to protest government efforts to demolish several mosques illegally built on government property.

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