By Zeeshan Haider ISLAMABAD, March 28 (Reuters) - Pro-Taliban Islamist students at a mosque in the Pakistani capital abducted three women they accused of running a brothel, and later grabbed two policemen triggering a standoff, officials and a cleric said on Wednesday. Islamabad authorities have for months been at odds with clerics and their followers at the mosque, well known for its criticism of the government and anti-U.S. stand, over government attempts to demolish mosques illegally built on public land. In behaviour reminiscent of Afghanistan under the Taliban, burqa-clad women students from the mosque's school, or madrasa, raided a house they said was a brothel in the heart of city on Tuesday night as part of a private anti-vice drive. The students took the woman house owner and two of her women relatives into their custody after she refused to shut down her business, one of the mosque's radical clerics, Abdul Rashid Ghazi said on Wednesday. "We have locked their brothel. The women are with us in the madrasa and we demand the government registers a case against them," Ghazi told a news conference at the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, in a central Islamabad neighbourhood. Ghazi said his supporters later detained two policemen and seized two police vehicles after security agencies detained four students of the Jamia Hafsa madrasa in connection with the abductions. Ghazi, known as a firebrand cleric who was linked to a bomb plot in 2004, threatened to launch jihad or Muslim holy war against the government if the students were not freed. A senior government official said authorities had taken several madrasa students into custody and were now trying to end the standoff. "They are crazy people. We want to resolve this amicably, through negotiations but we will take strict action if they fail to release the abducted people," said the official, who declined to be identified. Women from the Jamia Hafsa madrasa occupied a library next to their mosque in January as part of a campaign against efforts by city authorities to demolish illegally built mosques. The students are still occupying the library. Their compound has taken on the air of a fortified camp with young men with big sticks posted at the gate and at points along its walls. City authorities had offered alternative sites for mosques put up illegally but later abandoned the campaign against encroachment. Many Pakistanis have been dismayed by the behaviour of the students and clerics, and the government's failure to act against the first Taliban-style action seen in the capital.
