An arrest warrant has been issued for the radical pro-Taliban imam in Pakistan who refused to condemn the massacre of children at a school.
Senior Civil Judge Saqib Jawad issued the warrant against Imam Maulana Abdul Aziz after he was accused of threatening protesters outside the Red Mosque in Islamabad. The protest was staged over his refusal to condemn the massacre.
Of the 152 people murdered when Taliban terrorists opened fire in an army-run school in Peshawar in December, 133 were children.
Alhough the warrant was non-bailable, Imam Aziz said: "My case is very small and even a sub-inspector can grant me bail." Aziz himself runs a school which recently renamed its library after the late al-Qaeda murderer and terrorist Osama Bin Laden.
Pakistan's prime minister Nawaz Sharif lifted the moratorium on the death penalty for terrorists in response to the murders, along with new military courts to try terror cases. The prime minister said this week that in Pakistan there could be "no place for terrorism, extremism, sectarianism and intolerance."
A spokesman for the imam's Lal Masjid Shuhada Foundation said Aziz will resist arrest.
