Karachi:Riot police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse an anti-American rally in Karachi by a radical group, city officials said yesterday.

Pasban, a rights group, announced the rally to demand the release of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, aneuroscientist who is facing a jail term in the US on charges of murdering her US interrogators in Afghanistan. She has been convicted for 86 years in prison.

The protesters clashed with the police at the Abdullah Haroon Road, a busy area in the heart of the city. The officials used tear gas and batons to discourage them. The rally had paralysed Karachi for hours resulting in one of the worst traffic jams in recent times, the police said.

The announcement of blocking the US consulate alarmed the government, which deployed hundreds of riot and regular police in the city where the American consulate is located.

Roads leading to the consulate were blocked by erecting barriers and spiralling barbed wires. Water cannon was also kept ready in case the protesters violated the permissible limits of the rally. The blockade created traffic chaos as all the arteries linking the southern city, which constitutes the business and industrial concerns, was cut off from the central Karachi.

High security

"It is a menace, they just hold rallies in the name of people but never realise their miseries," a banker, who was stuck in the traffic jam complained.

The police said that they had to deploy the police contingents to prevent the protesters from violating the red zone that contain high security areas.

"We are not concerned to the objectives of the rally but our main concern is that they [the protesters] should not violate the security zone," said police superintendent, Tariq Dharejo, who was in charge of the southern city police.

Convicted

Siddiqui has been convicted of attacking US soldiers in Afghanistan during an alleged attempt to escape from the allied forces captivity.

Siddiqui's sister, Fauzia Siddiqui, with the assistance of Pasban, has launched a campaign for her release from the American prison and have vowed to keep holding rallies and demonstrations to this end.

"We are not here to burn the American flag or effigy of their president," Fauzia, who was clad in a black veil, told some two hundred protesters who were gathered outside the Karachi Press Club, the hub of such protests in the city.

"We just want the Americans realise that an 86-year imprisonment is a sheer injustice. Do free our sister," she called upon the American government.