30 January 2017•Update: 31 January 2017
By Aamir Latif
KARACHI, Pakistan
Pakistani authorities have put the head of Jamat ud Dawah (JuD), a group on the UN terrorist list, under house arrest in the northeastern city of Lahore, officials and the group’s spokesman confirmed on Monday.
Nadeem Ahmed, a JuD spokesman, told Anadolu Agency that Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, accused by India of masterminding several terrorist attacks, especially the 2008 Mumbai attack, has been put under arrest at a seminary -- Jamia Qadsia -- the JuD headquarters.
Four other party leaders have also been put under house arrest, he added.
“A heavy contingent of police has surrounded our headquarters [in Lahore], and Hafiz Saeed and other leaders are inside. They have verbally informed us about the house arrest but no written orders have so far been delivered,” Ahmed said.
According to a notification from the home department of Punjab province, of which Lahore is the capital, Hafiz Saeed and other leaders have been put under house arrest for six months.
Indian and western media often associate Hafiz Saeed and the JuD with Pakistan’s premier spy agency -- Inter Services Intelligence or the ISI -- a charge which Pakistan’s government and the JuD deny.
The group has been on the watch list of the country’s security agencies since 2011.
Hafiz Muhammad Saeed is a co-founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a militant group which is reportedly responsible for several attacks on the Indian army in occupied Jammu and Kashmir. He later founded the JuD in 2002 disassociating himself from the LeT, which according to him, was an Indian-held Kashmir-based group, and fighting for the right of self-determination.
The JuD was placed on the UN terror list after the 2008 deadly Mumbai attacks, in which over 150 people were killed. New Delhi accused Pakistan’s ISI and the JuD of masterminding and executing the attack.
Meanwhile, local satellite Geo TV quoted anonymous Foreign Ministry officials claiming that Hafiz Saeed had been put under house arrest at the demand of China, which, according to the channel, refused to veto any resolution against militant groups and leaders in the Security Council.
Beijing -- a close defense and economic ally of Islamabad -- has time and again vetoed moves led by India to declare Hafiz Saeed and Jesh-e-Mohammad Chief Maulana Masood Azhar “terrorists”.
The channel’s claim, however, could not be verified.
