Pakistani security forces arrested the leader of a radical mosque under siege in Islamabad as he tried to flee while disguised in an all-covering women's burqa.The capture of Maulana Abdul Aziz sparked an exodus from Lal Masjid, or the Red Mosque, with around 1,200 male and female Islamist students surrendering to the authorities a day after clashes there left 16 people dead.
Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azeem said it was a "farcical end" to the stand-off led by the cleric, who previously urged his followers to launch suicide attacks against the Government of President Pervez Musharraf.
"After all the things he has said and all the oaths he took from his students that they should embrace martyrdom with him, look at this man, he had to eventually try to run like a woman," the minister told AFP.
Officials became suspicious when a group of 20 burqa-clad women from the mosque started screaming as they were taken to a nearby school for security checks after giving themselves up, saying the procedure was un-Islamic.
"Our men spotted his (Aziz's) unusual demeanour. The rest of the girls looked like girls but he was taller and had a pot belly," a security official said on condition of anonymity.
Paramilitary officer Manzoor Ahmad, who saw the incident, said a security official "spotted a tall, well-built woman with a big belly who was neither shouting nor screaming."
"The officer pounced on the lady, and as he grabbed her, the burqa came off and his beard fell out. He asked the man who he was and he said 'I am Maulana (senior cleric) Abdul Aziz," the soldier said.
Television footage showed armed intelligence officials dragging him by the beard towards a black Toyota Corolla and driving away at high speed.
Aziz's wife, who runs a women's religious school attached to the mosque, and two of the children of his brother, deputy mosque leader Abdul Rashid Ghazi, were also arrested, officials said.
Ghazi was believed to be still holed up in the mosque with around 500 supporters.
"There are very few people left with Ghazi in the mosque. The sooner he surrenders, the better it will be for him," Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Cheema told reporters, adding that between 1,100 and 1,200 had surrendered.
Aziz's arrest partially defused the tension around the mosque, where troops in armoured personnel carriers and helicopter gunships enforced a shoot-on-sight curfew imposed in the early hours of Wednesday (local time).
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