and elders that they would remain peaceful. They received Aziz warmly when he reached there. The Namaz-e-Janaza was offered at about 10:50 am and immediately afterwards the police took Maulana Aziz into custody for taking him to Rajanpur before the burial. The burial was delayed four times because of the arrival of some other relatives and members of the family from Islamabad and finally it took place at 2:40 pm after MMA MNA Maulana Shah Abdul Aziz reached the seminary from Islamabad. Haji Muhammad Khan said his son Atta Muhammad, 35, were also killed in the operation but his body had not been handed over to them. Atta was in-charge of Jamia Abdullah bin Ghazi, which was set up in 2002. His father said he had gone to Islamabad to meet his cousins a couple of days ago but then they came to know that he was also killed. The bereaved family of Maulana Ghazi said he had command over six languages, Balochi, Seraiki, Urdu, English, Persian and Arabic. He used to communicate in Balochi with his family and with the tribals of his area. Talking to reporters after the funeral prayers, Maulana Abdul Aziz said his failed escape from Lal Masjid was according to a plan made by the two brothers. He said the government had humiliated him by forcing him to wear Burqa. He said his wife and son were missing and the government was not ready to provide any information about them. The Maulana said all the cases against him were baseless and he would face them. He said they had been demanding the enforcement of Sharia and would continue to do so. Talking to reporters, MNA Maulana Shah Abdul Aziz alleged that more than 700 students had been killed in the operation against the Lal Masjid administration. Agencies add: Around 2,000 people chanting “Allah-o-Akbar!” massed for the burial of Maulana Ghazi at his dust-bowl village. As Ghazi’s body was lowered into the grave in a locked wooden coffin, mourners broke the glass lid and tore off the white cloth from the face to check it really was the 43-year-old cleric. “I lost my brother, my students, for the enforcement of Sharia,” Maulana Aziz told mourners, speaking under tight police guard. “Ghazi and all those who died in the mosque are martyrs. My wife and daughters are in custody but this will not stop us from struggling for an Islamic system,” he said. Loudspeakers blared out Jihadi songs, while enraged students chanted “al-Jihad, al-Jihad” and “Allah-o-Akbar” at the village seminary where the ceremony took place, before the burial in a graveyard surrounded by cotton fields. Several people began to chant slogans against President Pervez Musharraf but were quickly stopped by other mourners, witnesses said. “It is cruelty. This raid was meant to please America and the West,” Mufti Habib-ur-Rehman Darkhuwasti told the students of Jamia Abdullah bin Ghazi. Asma Aziz, the 14-year-old daughter of the surviving cleric Aziz, said she wanted to die inside the mosque, her lawyer said. “I wanted to remain with uncle Shaheed Ghazi, fighting till the end, but my mother asked me to accompany her,” lawyer Hashmat Habib quoted Asma as telling him on Wednesday, when he met her. Asma, her elder sister and their mother will face charges including the murder of security personnel in an anti-terrorism court, the lawyer said. Asma also denied that her father wanted to escape and said authorities had asked him to cover his face to avoid the media and told him a meeting had been arranged with a top government official, she said. “He wanted to save the lives of hundreds of men, women and children,” she reportedly said. “I know him as his daughter, he would have never surrendered.”
