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TORONTO — Rashid Ahmed answered the phone at his suburban home in Mississauga this week, which would not be unusual except for the fact that he is being investigated by Pakistani police over a deadly sectarian clash two months ago.

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“Luckily I escaped,” he said in an interview during which he acknowledged that Pakistani police had named him “as a terrorist” over the Dec. 12 incident at a mosque in Pakistan’s Chakwal district.

Ahmed said he had returned to Canada before he could be arrested. “That’s how I am safe here, thank God. It’s all work of God, I believe, because had I been caught it would have been not good for my health at all.”

After a mob estimated at between 1,000 and 3,000 stormed the mosque belonging to the minority Ahmadiyya sect in Dulmial, leaving two dead and a half-dozen wounded, Pakistani news agencies identified Ahmed as the key figure behind the attack.

They have claimed that we attacked. It was not an attack. It was an agitation. They attacked us

He denied that, and told the National Post a different version of events, saying a peaceful procession had entered the mosque after being taunted, pelted with stones and shot at. “They have claimed that we attacked. It was not an attack. It was an agitation. They attacked us,” he said. “The rest of what happened was a natural reaction.”