LAHORE,Pakistan-Authorities mounted a massive security operation Tuesday to hold opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest for the second time in five days and prevent her from staging a 185-mile protest march against emergency rule.An aide to Bhutto said her supporters would sweep away the barricades and allow her to embark on the planned three-day procession. However, police swiftly detained the first demonstrators to arrive at the cordon around her residence.The clampdown intensified the political crisis engulfing Pakistan and further clouded the prospect of a pro-U.S. alliance against rising Islamic extremism forming between Bhutto and President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.Police detained about 20 Bhutto supporters, including two party officials and two lawmakers, who tried to cross barricades and drove them away in prison service vans."They are depriving us of our fundamental right to protest against authoritarian rule and hold a long march for the revival of democracy," Yusuf Raza Gilani, a former speaker of Pakistan's National Assembly told reporters as he was led away.Farzana Raja, a spokeswoman for Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, claimed thousands of its activists had been rounded up to thwart the march. Raja too was detained.Bhutto's aide, Sen. Safdar Abbasi, had said the seven-day detention order was not binding because neither Bhutto nor one of her representatives had been served with the document.However, Aftab Cheema, the chief of operations of Lahore city police, told the AP that a Bhutto representative had received the order issued by the government of Punjab province."She has been detained and she won't be allowed to come out," Cheema said.
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LAHORE,Pakistan-Authorities mounted a massive security operation Tuesday to hold opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest for the second time in five days and prevent her from staging a 185-mile protest march against emergency rule.An aide to Bhutto said her supporters would sweep away the barricades and allow her to embark on the planned three-day procession. However, police swiftly detained the first demonstrators to arrive at the cordon around her residence.The clampdown intensified the political crisis engulfing Pakistan and further clouded the prospect of a pro-U.S. alliance against rising Islamic extremism forming between Bhutto and President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.Police detained about 20 Bhutto supporters, including two party officials and two lawmakers, who tried to cross barricades and drove them away in prison service vans."They are depriving us of our fundamental right to protest against authoritarian rule and hold a long march for the revival of democracy," Yusuf Raza Gilani, a former speaker of Pakistan's National Assembly told reporters as he was led away.Farzana Raja, a spokeswoman for Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, claimed thousands of its activists had been rounded up to thwart the march. Raja too was detained.Bhutto's aide, Sen. Safdar Abbasi, had said the seven-day detention order was not binding because neither Bhutto nor one of her representatives had been served with the document.However, Aftab Cheema, the chief of operations of Lahore city police, told the AP that a Bhutto representative had received the order issued by the government of Punjab province."She has been detained and she won't be allowed to come out," Cheema said.
