Pakistan cracks down on charity linked to Mumbai attacks.

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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If these charities are a front for terrorist activities, then it is great news that they are being closed down. It is good to see the evidence being provided to the Pakistani authorities and they taking action. Long may the action against the Pakistani based terrorists continue. The sooner the terrorists are rooted out of Pakistan, the sooner Pakistan can get back to the path of nation building and development.

Pakistan cracks down on charity linked to Mumbai attacks : International : The Buffalo News

Pakistan cracks down on charity linked to Mumbai attacks

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan on Thursday closed 11 offices of a controversial Islamic charity that has been linked to last month’s deadly attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai and placed the group’s leader under house arrest.

In India, top government officials announced a massive revamping of the country’s security infrastructure, including creation of an FBI-style national agency to investigate terror attacks.

Hafiz Sayeed, the leader of the charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, was put under house arrest in Lahore, according to a Pakistani foreign ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The arrest was confirmed by a top Jamaat-ud-Dawa official.

Sayeed was one of four individuals singled out by the U. N. Security Council late Wednesday when it placed Jamaat-ud-Dawa on a list of terrorist organizations and imposed sanctions on the group, including a freeze on assets, a travel ban and an arms embargo.

The U. N. also said the charity was directly linked to Lashkar-i-Taiba, the outlawed Pakistani militant group that Indian authorities blame for the three-day siege in Mumbai that killed at least 171 people, including six Americans.

“Pakistan has taken note of the designation of certain individuals and entities by the U. N.,” Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani said hours before the house arrest, adding that the country would “fulfill its international obligations.”
Also included in the sanctions were Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, described as the operational commander and architect of the Mumbai attacks, and Haji Muhammad Ashraf and Mahmoud Ahmed Bahaziq, alleged Lashkar financiers. Pakistani security forces had arrested Lakhvi on Sunday.

Before arresting Sayeed late Thursday, Pakistan shuttered nine Karachi offices of Jamaatud-Dawa and the group’s main offices in Lahore and Muridke.

Jamaat official Amir Hamza said Thursday night that 70 to 80 members of the organization were rounded up in raids across the country. Hamza said Pakistani authorities had placed him and eight others on a wanted list and were preparing to arrest them.

Indian officials hailed Wednesday night’s U. N. action as a long overdue step in the right direction and called on Pakistan not to repeat a past pattern of arresting suspected extremists — including Sayeed — and then letting them go without standing trial.

“This only underscores what India has maintained throughout: that the forces of violence and terror, the organized groups which have attacked India on many occasions . . . pose a threat to civil world,” Indian Deputy Foreign Minister Anand Sharma said.

Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told the country’s parliament that Pakistan needed to follow up on its promises of action against militant groups. “They are banning organizations. Lashkar-i-Taiba was banned. But simply they are changing names, they are changing signboards,” Mukherjee said. “Faces are the same, ideology are the same. How does it help us?”

At a news conference at his Lahore headquarters, hours before he was placed under house arrest, Sayeed denied reports that he had met with a Mumbai attacker and said his group split from Lashkar after Pakistan banned Lashkar following a 2001 attack on India’s parliament.

Sayeed said Jamaat-ud-Dawa would lodge a strong protest with the U. N. and the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.

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Now Dawn Confirms it!!

KARACHI, Dec 11: The targeting of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaatud Dawa and the rounding up of the activists belonging to the two jihadi organisations appear to have been triggered by information originating in India following the capture of one of the 10 men who attacked several targets in Mumbai towards the end of last month.

During the course of Dawn’s own investigations last week our reporters were able to locate a family who claimed to be the kin of the arrested young man in Mumbai.

The sole survivor among the 10 attackers was named as Ajmal Kasab and was supposed to belong to the village Faridkot in the Punjab. Media organisations such as the BBC and now the British newspaper Observer have done reports trying to ascertain the veracity of claims appearing in the media that the young man had a home there.

On Friday last, the BBC reported unusual activity in Faridkot near Deepalpur. A BBC correspondent located a house in the village, the then inhabitants of which carried the surname of Kasab (or Qasab as the word is often spelt here). But the residents denied any link with either Ajmal or with any Amir Kasab, the name of Ajmal’s father as reported by some of the media.

At the weekend, the Observer in England claimed that it had managed to locate the house everyone was looking for so desperately. Its correspondent said he had got hold of the voters’ roll which had the names of Amir Kasab and his wife, identified as Noor, as well as the numbers on the identity cards the couple carried.

Even though the news stories by both BBC and the Observer made a mention of the LeT, some television channels in Pakistan suggested that a connection between Mumbai and Faridkot could not be established beyond a shadow of doubt.

** However, the man who said he was Amir Kasab confirmed to Dawn that the young man whose face had been beamed over the media was his son.**

For the next few minutes, the fifty-something man of medium build agonized over the reality that took time sinking in, amid sobs complaining about the raw deal the fate had given him and his family.

“I was in denial for the first couple of days, saying to myself it could not have been my son,” he told Dawn in the courtyard of his house in Faridkot, a village of about 2,500 people just a few kilometres from Deepalpur on the way to Kasur. “Now I have accepted it.

** “This is the truth. I have seen the picture in the newspaper. This is my son Ajmal.”**

Variously addressed as Azam, Iman, Kamal and Kasav, the young man, apparently in his 20s, is being kept in custody at an undisclosed place in Mumbai.

Indian media reports ‘based on intelligence sources’ said the man was said to be a former Faridkot resident who left home a frustrated teenager about four years ago and went to Lahore.

After his brush with crime and criminals in Lahore, he is said to have run into and joined a religious group during a visit to Rawalpindi.

Along with others, claimed the Indian media, he was trained in fighting. And after a crash course in navigation, said Amir Kasab, a father of three sons and two daughters, Ajmal disappeared from home four years ago.

“He had asked me for new clothes on Eid that I couldn’t provide him. He got angry and left.”

While Amir was talking, Ajmal’s two “sisters and a younger brother” were lurking about. To Amir’s right, on a nearby charpoy, sat their mother, wrapped in a chador and in a world of her own. Her trance was broken as the small picture of Ajmal lying in a Mumbai hospital was shown around. They appeared to have identified their son. The mother shrunk back in her chador but the father said he had no problem in talking about the subject.

Amir Kasab said he had settled in Faridkot after arriving from the nearby Haveli Lakha many years ago. He owned the house and made his earnings by selling pakoras in the streets of the village.

He modestly pointed to a hand-cart in one corner of the courtyard. “This is all I have. I shifted back to the village after doing the same job in Lahore.

“My eldest son, Afzal, is also back after a stint in Lahore. He is out working in the fields.”

Faridkot is far from the urbanites’ idea of a remote village. It is located right off a busy road and bears all the characteristics of a lower-middle class locality in a big city.

It has two middle-level schools, one for girls and the other for boys which Ajmal attended as a young boy. For higher standards, the students have to enroll in schools in Deepalpur which is not as far off as the word remote tends to indicate.

It by no means qualifies as Punjab’s backwaters, which makes the young Ajmal’s graduation to an international “fearmonger” even more difficult to understand. The area can do with cleaner streets and a better sewage system but the brick houses towards the side of the Kasur-Deepalpur road have a more organised look to them than is the case with most Pakistani villages.

The Observer newspaper reports that some locals seeking anonymity say the area is a hunting ground for the recruiters of LeT and provides the organisation with rich pickings.

The approach to Faridkot also points to at least some opportunities for those looking for a job. There are some factories in the surroundings, rice mills et al, interspersed with fertile land. But for the gravity of the situation, with its mellowed and welcoming ambience, the picture could be serene.

It is not and Amir Kasab repeats how little role he has had in the scheme since the day his son walked out on him. He calls the people who snatched Ajmal from him his enemies but has no clue who these enemies are. Asked why he didn’t look for his son all this while, he counters: “What could I do with the few resources that I had?”

Otherwise quite forthcoming in his answers, Amir Kasab, a mild-mannered soul, is a bit agitated at the mention of the link between his son’s actions and money. Indian media has claimed that Ajmal’s handlers had promised him that his family will be compensated with Rs150,000 (one and a half lakh) after the completion of the Mumbai mission.

“I don’t sell my sons,” he retorts.

Journalists visiting Faridkot since Dawn reporters were at the village say the family has moved from their home and some relatives now live in the house. Perhaps fearing a media invasion, nobody is willing to say where the family has gone.

Crackdown hints at Faridkot-Mumbai link -DAWN - Top Stories; December 12, 2008

Programming
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Re: Now Dawn Confirms it!!

[note] Copy pasting articles without putting your comments is not allowed as per forum rules. Furthermore, I see no reason why this has to be a topic on its own and not part of the threads in Pak Affairs[/note]

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Re: Now Dawn Confirms it!!

^
Now tell me one thing, do you believe Dawn or not? :)

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Re: Pakistan cracks down on charity linked to Mumbai attacks.

Do you believe in forum rules?

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Yes, why do you want to mix the things? Answer my question plz :)

Accessing Computer Remotely
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Re: Pakistan cracks down on charity linked to Mumbai attacks.

I will believe whatever India says if they can do the following:

  1. Show what evidence they have collected to identify the first man taken. Not what he said. But rather how they identified him.
  2. Show proof of the other 10 men they have captured and how they are linked with LET.
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I think you are confused as to who is mixing things my friend. I moved your post, which was in violation of forum policies, that's it. If you have questions about that, feel free to ask, otherwise I am not obliged to answer anything.

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Even the US is now saying that the Charity is front for terrorist group. How many more charities in Pakistan are involved in such activities?

FOXNews.com - UN says Pakistan charity front for terrorist group - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

UN says Pakistan charity front for terrorist group

UNITED NATIONS — A U.N. Security Council panel declared Wednesday that a Pakistan-based charity is a front group for the terrorist organization blamed in the attacks on Mumbai that killed 171 people.

In a move sought by India and the U.S., the panel said the charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa is a front for the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba and now subject to U.N. sanctions on terrorist organizations. It also approved the designation of four suspected plotters of the Mumbai attacks as terrorists subject to sanctions.

The U.N. identified all four individuals as leaders of Lashkar. They include Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, operations chief and the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai siege whose arrest was announced Wednesday. The others are Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the leader of the charity; Haji Muhammad Ashraf, Lashkar’s chief of finance; and Mahmoud Mohammad Ahmed Bahaziq, a financier with Lashkar.

Among the sanctions imposed on the group and the four individuals by the Security Council’s al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee were an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo on the individuals. The panel is authorized to make such decisions on behalf of the Security Council.

India had pressed the Security Council for sanctions against the charity on Tuesday, contending along with the U.S. that Jamaat-ud-Dawa is a front for Lashkar.

Since 2005, that sanctions committee _ a powerful tool of the U.N.'s powerhouse 15-nation Security Council _ has considered Lashkar to be a terrorist organization affiliated with al-Qaida. The United States and European Union also have sanctioned the group.

By agreeing that Jamaat-ud-Dawa is essentially an alias for Lashkar, the U.N. panel has significantly added to India’s pressure for Pakistan’s civilian government to prove that it is cracking down on militant groups and pursuing extremists blamed for last month’s siege of India’s commercial capital.

Lakhvi was detained during a raid Sunday in Pakistan’s portion of Kashmir, the mountainous region claimed by both nations that has been a focus of two of their three wars since 1947. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said Wednesday that Pakistani authorities also had detained Zarrar Shah, an alleged leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Pakistani officials, however, say India has not shared evidence from its investigation of the attack, in another manifestation of the deep mistrust between the nuclear-armed neighbors that the U.S. has been struggling to prevent from becoming a bigger crisis.

Jamaat-ud-Dawa emerged after Pakistan’s government banned Lashkar in 2002, following U.S. pressure. The group, which has denied any links to Lashkar, runs a chain of schools and medical clinics and has helped survivors of two deadly earthquakes in recent years.

The charity’s leader, Saeed, repeated his group’s denial of links to Lashkar.
“No Lashkar-e-Taiba man is in Jamaat-ud-Dawa and I have never been a chief of Lashkar-e-Taiba,” he told Pakistan’s Geo television Wednesday.

U.S. officials contend that Saeed, one of the suspected Lashkar leaders detained and released in 2002, is still the overall leader of Lashkar.

American authorities believe that these “high-priority designations … will limit the ability of known terrorists to travel, acquire weapons, plan, carry out, or raise funds for new terrorist attacks,” the U.S. State Department said Wednesday.

The U.N. sanctions panel also described a number of trusts and foundations as aliases for the al-Rashid and al-Akhtar trusts, which have raised funds for Lashkar.

According to the panel, the al-Rashid Trust can be equated with the al-Amin Welfare Trust, al-Amin Trust, al-Ameen Trust, al-Ameen Trust, al-Madina Trust and al-Madina Trust.

The al-Akhtar Trust aliases, the panel said, are Pakistan Relief Foundation, Pakistani Relief Foundation, Azmat-e-Pakistan Trust and Azmat Pakistan Trust.
Lashkar is widely believed to have been created with the help of Pakistan’s military and intelligence services as a proxy fighting force in India’s part of Kashmir, where Muslim separatists have engaged in a long insurgency.

On Tuesday, E. Ahamed, India’s junior foreign minister, urged the Security Council to ban Jamaat-ud-Dawa as “a terrorist outfit” and called on Pakistan during a council debate on counterterrorism to take “urgent steps to stop their functioning.”

Pakistani Ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon responded that his country’s intelligence and police agencies already were investigating Jamaat-ud-Dawa and other groups and may impose punitive measures, including a freeze on their financial assets.

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Re: Pakistan cracks down on charity linked to Mumbai attacks.

UN should pass a similar resolution naming ISI also as a terrorist organization -

Battery Life?
Battery Life?
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Re: Pakistan cracks down on charity linked to Mumbai attacks.

^ not to forget RAW, VHP etc

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You may be right. But RAW does not work against the interest of India where as ISI does work against the foundation of Pakistan. The current example of Bombing of retards connected to LtD, connected to intelligence agencies. That is the main difference.

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