Pakistan cracks down on Lashkar

12/12/2008| IslamWeb

Pakistan shut offices and arrested scores of activists of an Islamic charity as international pressure mounted for firm action against militants blamed for the Mumbai attacks, officials said on Friday.

 

The overnight raids followed Pakistan announcing it would abide by a U.N. decision placing Hafiz Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, on its terrorism sanctions list of people and organizations linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban.

 

The action followed mounting pressure for action from India and the United States after the attack by gunmen that killed 179 people, including six Americans, in Mumbai last month.

 

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte met with Pakistani political leaders and army chief General Kayani before going to New Delhi on Friday, as Washington kept up intense diplomatic efforts partly aimed at keeping Pakistani-Indian relations from worsening.

 

Saeed, who founded Lashkar in 1990 and officially left it in 2001 just days before Pakistan banned it, has been put under house arrest, according to one of his spokesmen.

 

Three associates were also added to the U.N. list and will be subject to sanctions freezing assets and restricting travel, but a Pakistani television news channel reported one of them is dead and another has been in a Saudi jail for the past three years.

 

An intelligence official told Reuters that Maulana Masood Azhar, head of the Jaish-e-Mohammad group blamed with Lashkar for a 2001 attack on India's parliament, was also detained.

 

One close aide of Azhar's told Reuters: "I think they could have detained him to relieve pressure, but I don't know the exact whereabouts of the Maulana."

 

In Pakistani Kashmir's capital Muzaffarabad, police raided Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a charity regarded as a Lashkar front.

 

"On the orders of the Interior Ministry, we have sealed their main office and all their assets including two schools and a religious seminary and placed its regional head under house arrest," said Chaudhry Imtiaz, a top administration official.

 

Police raided JuD offices elsewhere in Pakistani Kashmir, as well as in several cities including Multan, Bahawalpur, Rahim Yar Khan, Lahore, Karachi and Quetta. A Jamaat spokesman said 100 workers were arrested in North West Frontier Province alone.

 

The Jamaat-ud-Dawa's headquarters at a sprawling complex in the eastern town of Muridke appeared deserted. Officials said the office, schools and hospitals it ran there had shut on December 4.

 

A spokesman for Pakistan's central bank said late on Thursday that directives had been issued to banks to freeze JuD accounts and assets of the four men added to the U.N. sanctions list.

 

India wants more done

 

Television reports said the JuD would be banned though no official announcement has yet been made.

 

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told parliament on Thursday that Pakistan needed to do more.

 

"We have noted the reported steps that have been taken by Pakistan. But clearly much more needs to be done and the actions should be pursued to their local conclusion."

 

A Pakistani crackdown on Jaish and Lashkar after the 2001 attack on India's parliament was regarded as a sham, and India will be looking for more concrete and lasting action this time.

 

Analysts say the question is whether Pakistan's military would be willing to abandon support for groups who have helped them fight India in the past.

 

The new civilian government is less than nine months old and the army, while supportive of a transition to democracy, retains influence over foreign policy and national security strategy and tactics.

 

Pakistan has said it will fully cooperate with India and has started its own investigation against people and groups allegedly involved in Mumbai attacks, but said India has not provided any evidence of their involvement.

 

"Our own investigations cannot proceed beyond a certain point without provision of credible information and evidence pertaining to Mumbai attacks," Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said in a televised statement early on Friday.

 

Meantime Pakistani television news channels picked holes in the names placed on the U.N. sanctions list.

 

Geo News said Haji Muhammad Ashraf, Lashkar's finance chief, died in a hospital in southern city of Hyderabad in June 2002.

 

The report said Ashraf, 70, was arrested twice, once in connection with a car bomb outside the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi which killed 14 people, including 11 French engineers.

 

Geo also quoted an unnamed Jamaat leader as saying Haji Mahmoud Mohammad Ahmed Bahazaiq, described as a financier, has been in a Saudi jail for the past three years.

 

PHOTO CAPTION

 

Pakistani security officials gather outside the office of Jamaat-ud-Dawa in Hyderabad December 11, 2008.

 

Al-Jazeera