Pak cleric agrees to vacate mosque

Islamabad: Deposed cleric of Pakistan’s Lal Masjid Maulana Abdul Aziz, who occupied the state-owned mosque here and asserted his claim to be its prayer leader, has agreed to vacate it by Tuesday after striking a deal with the government. Aziz was removed from the post on the orders of the court in 2004 following a fatwa he issued against the army and the operation against terrorists in Waziristan. However, he was reinstated after his release from prison in 2009, but he stirred another controversy in 2014 after he openly extended support to the perpetrators of the Army Public School attack in Peshawar by calling it a reactionary move by the terrorists. Lal Masjid is a state-owned mosque in Islamabad and Maulana Abdullah, father of Aziz, was its first cleric. After his assassination in the 1990s, Aziz was appointed the cleric by the Islamabad Capital Territory’s (ICT) Auqaf Department.