Pakistani authorities have placed the former head of the Lashkar-e-Taiba Islamic militant group under house arrest, a spokesman for the Islamic charity he now runs said yesterday.
Hafiz Mohammad Saeed abandoned Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2001 -- a day before it was banned by Pakistan's military ruler President Pervez Musharraf -- and set up the Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, regarded as its political wing.
The US has designated both as terrorist organizations.
"They informed us last night that Hafiz could not leave his residence and this restriction is for one month," Yahya Mujahid, Jamaat-ud-Dawa's spokesman said.
He said the charity had been banned from all public activities.
After joining a US-led global war on terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US, Pakistan put the leaders of several militant organizations under house arrest. Saeed has been put under house arrest several times before, but he has been operating freely for the past few years.
Pakistan's reluctance to act more strongly against these groups probably stems from the military Inter-Services Intelligence agency's history of support for their activities, according to analysts.
Mujahid said police had been stationed at Saeed's residence and police had also cancelled permission for Jamaat-ud-Dawa to hold a rally in Lahore tomorrow.
India has called for Pakistan to act more forcefully to shut down militant organizations in the wake of the Mumbai blasts, and New Delhi's suspicions of Pakistani links to the attacks have jeopardized a peace process the nuclear-armed rivals began more than two years ago.
There was no immediate official reaction from India, but foreign ministry officials in New Delhi expressed a mixture of surprise and scepticism.
"Pakistan is probably trying to give the impression that they are doing something about these groups. Such house arrests have taken place in the past as well and these leaders end up living in luxury," one official, who requested anonymity, said. India cancelled a meeting to review the peace process last month.
Both sides have subsequently said they want to go on with talks, but tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats for spying last week showed how strained relations have become.
An attack by Pakistani militants on India's parliament in December 2001 brought the two countries to the brink of a fourth war in mid-2002. Lashkar-e-Taiba was one of the groups implicated in the attack.
Lashkar-e-Taiba say it only operates out of Indian Kashmir, although members of Lashkar have been arrested in the US.
Jamaat-ud-Dawa is regarded within the intelligence community as a fund-raising front for Lashkar-e-Taiba. It was added to a US State Department terrorist list earlier this year, and while Pakistan has put it on a watchlist it is not banned.
In a report issued last year, the State Department said Lashkar used the charity to gather funds and maintain ties with religious militant groups around the world, ranging from the Philippines to the Middle East and Chechnya.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese