Pakistan cracks down on Lashkar, charity; scores held
12 Dec 2008 14:43:55 GMT Source: Reuters
* Pakistan cracks down as U.S., India continues pressure * Jaish militant chief Azhar said among those detained * Pakistan TV suggests one U.N. target dead, another jailed By Abu Arqam Naqash MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Pakistan shut offices and arrested scores of activists of an Islamic charity, officials said on Friday, as international pressure mounted for firm action against militants blamed for the Mumbai attacks. The overnight raids came after Pakistan said 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 organisations linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban. India and the United States have been urging Pakistani action after the Mumbai attack by gunmen that killed 179 people last month. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte met with Pakistani political leaders and the army chief before going to New Delhi on Friday. There, he met External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan and urged more international cooperation into the investigation. "We're cooperating in this effort, obviously the government of India is in the lead, but all of our diplomatic partners have a responsibility to contribute to this effort," Negroponte said in a statement in New Delhi. [nDEL411622] Pakistan said it was investigating links with the Mumbai attack, but that India has not provided any evidence. "Our own investigations cannot proceed beyond a certain point without provision of credible information and evidence pertaining to the Mumbai attacks," Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said in a televised statement early on Friday. Washington has kept up diplomatic pressure to keep Pakistani-Indian relations from worsening and Islamabad focused on the war on terrorism. Pakistan has responded by rounding up some of the 40 people India has demanded be extradited. [nISL376126] MILITANT SWEEP Saeed, who founded Lashkar in 1990 and officially left the jihadi group 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 TV news channel reported one of them was dead and another had 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 the Pakistani Kashmir capital Muzaffarabad, police raided an office, two schools and a religious seminary run by Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), a charity regarded as a Lashkar front. The U.N. has put the JuD on its terrorist list too. Hundreds of supporters and people who recalled JuD's work during an earthquake in Kashmir in 2005 protested the raids. "Pakistan should revisit its policy of bowing before international pressure immediately, without regard for the pros and cons of its actions," Maulana Abdul Aziz Alvi, JuD's head in Pakistani Kashmir, told Reuters from house arrest. 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 charity'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 Dec. 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. Television reports said the JuD would be banned though no official announcement has yet been made. Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Richard Boucher, after meeting Chinese officials in Beijing, said Pakistan's moves were "good steps". "But you also have to find out who else was trained and what else might they have planned, and so I think we want to keep working with Pakistan and make sure that other threats, other dangers, other terrorists, can be stopped," he told reporters. 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 steps this time. (Additional reporting by Asim Tanveer in Multan, Gul Yousafzai in Quetta, Imtiaz Shah in Karachi, Krittivas Mukherjee in New Delhi and Chris Buckley in Beijing; Writing by Augustine Anthony; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
Wrecked cars are seen outside a damaged building in Wudu town, Longnan city, Gansu province in this video grab from CCTV footage of November 20 released November 21, 2008. The governor ...
