KARACHI, May 8: An all-parties conference (APC) held under the auspices of the Jamaat-i-Islami, Karachi, on Thursday, called for the arrest of all those involved in the violent incidents of May 12, in 2004 and 2007.

The APC also announced plans to observe May 12 as a ‘black day’. The moot also adopted a resolution urging the government to keep all those elements out of the present government who were involved in both the May 12 tragedies.

The resolution also called for holding high-level independent inquiries of the Nishtar Park tragedy on 12 Rabiul Awwal and the bomb blasts in the welcome procession of the slain PPP chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, on October 18, 2007. In the two tragic incidents over 50 religious scholars and as many as 150 innocent peoples were killed respectively.

Representatives of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), Awami National Party (ANP), NWP, PTI, JUP, JUI-S, ST, AT and LP attended the moot, which was presided over by the deputy chief of the Jamaat-i-Islami, Prof Ghafoor Ahmad.

The resolution also called for a probe into the April 9 incident and urged the government to take action against the culprits. It noted that the May 12, 2004 and 2007 tragedies were the darkest chapters of the history of the country, which could never be forgotten.

On the day of by-elections on May 12, 2004, terrorists had unleashed a wave of violence by killing dozens of political workers in an attempt to hijack the poll results, while on May 12, 2007 on the eve of the arrival of the deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, political workers and citizens who wanted to go to the airport to accord a welcome to the chief justice were shot at and as a result as many as 50 innocent people were killed.

The resolution criticised President Pervez Musharraf who had termed the May 12 mayhem as a demonstration of power by the people.

The APC demanded that such elements should not be made part of the government and should be brought to book and tried in a court of law otherwise such tragedies would continue to recur.