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August 10, 2006

Pakistan: Islamist's House Arrest May Thaw Frosty Indian Relations

The founder and former leader of the Islamist terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) (Army of the Pure) has been placed under house arrest in Pakistan, states the Hindu, AKI, Associated Press via CBS2 and from Pakistan, the Daily Times.

Hafiz Mohammed Saeed (pictured) is also the leader of the group Jamat-ud-Dawah (Jama'at-ud Da'awah), or Party of the Calling. He had wanted to hold a rally in Lahore, Punjab province, on 14 August, which would have marked Pakistan's independence say. His house arrest will last for a month.

Khawaja Khalid Farooq, the police chief in Lahore, said that Saeed had been held under detention at home for "security reasons". Saeed had been in charge of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group which is known to have committed numerous terrorist acts while under his control, but had resigned his leadership of the group in 2002. It was in this year, in January, that Pakistan banned LeT. The terror group commits acts of atrocity in an attempt to force India to give up its control of Kashmir.

One of the many terrorist activities carried out by LeT under the leadership of Hafiz Mohammed Saeed was the attack upon the historic Red Fort in Delhi India on Deember 22, 2000. Three people were killed in an armed raid by LeT members. On October 31 the leader of the attack was sentenced to death.

LeT also carried out the triple bomb attacks in Delhi on October 29 2005, which killed 59 people. Initially, LeT had denied involvement and even offered its "condolences" to its own victims. LeT is also thought to have caused the multiple bombings on trains at Mumbai on June 11. Almost 200 people died in these attacks, and India demanded that Pakistan give up Hafiz Mohammed Saeed.

Saeed is top of India's "most wanted" list. India has several times requested that Pakistan hand over the man responsible for numerous acts of terror against its citizens, and Pakistan has never complied. Recently, this attitude had caused India and Pakistan to severely cool in their relations. India had publicly accused Pakistan of allowing terrorism to flourish from its territory.

LeT had been founded shortly after the launching of a parent group called Markaz Dawa ul Irshad,in the late 1980s. It grew in notoriety and also popularity when it started to use "fidayeen", suicide bombers in its attacks against Indian interests. It has also attacked Hindu temples and individuals. In May 2002 it attacked wives and children of Indian soldiers while India and Pakistan's relations were on the verge of war.

In February this year, Saeed was arrested after his involvement in the violent protests against the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, Islam's founder.

After LeT was made illegal, Saeed set up the Jamat-ud-Dawah. This group has its base at Mudrike, 40 miles west of Lahore, where there was already a branch headquarters of Markaz Dawa ul Irshad. Jamat-ud-Dawa (logo pictured) was placed on a "watch list" by Pakistan in November 2003, but has never been made illegal, though its activities are still blatantly criminal.

Jamat-ud-Dawa acts as a fundraising arm for LeT, and its website currently boasts that it has given large donations to Palestinian and Hizbollah leaders.

It was placed on a US State Department list of specially designated terror groups, along with its affiliate group, Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq (IKK) on April 28 this year. However, as we reported on May 2, Pakistan refused to outlaw the group.

As we mentioned on May 21 US Christian missionaries filmed an operation in which a local Islamist from the Jamat-ud-Dawa organisation, Gul Khan, traded kidnapped Christian children for money, from the Mudrike headquarters

The Daily Times reports that Indian officials have seen the house arrest of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed as a "welcome development".

It is hoped that the action will smooth the way for a meeting between Pervez Musharraf and the Indian prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, in September. This will be taking place while the leaders will be at the Non-Aligned Summit in Havana, Cuba.

The Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran had compained recently at a conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh that Saeed and also Syed Salahuddin (leader of another Kashmiri terror group Hizbul Mujahideen) were "roaming free". In repudiation of Pakistan's claims that it was acting to suppress terrorism, Saran had said that the arrests of Sayeed and Salhuddin were just "some of the actions that Pakistan could take easily."

Indeed.

Keywords: Jamat-ud-Dawah, Jamaat-ud-Dawah, Jama'at-ud Da'awah, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at August 10, 2006 11:41 PM

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