ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has closed all the offices of a charity with links to the banned group India blames for the Mumbai attacks with immediate effect, a government spokesman said yesterday.
The move came after the UN Security Council on Wednesday declared Jamaat-ud-Dawa a terrorist group and ordered sanctions against four people, including the charity’s leader.
The Dawn News TV channel quoted Rehman Malik, adviser to the prime minister on interior affairs, as saying that Pakistan has banned the group with immediate effect and its activities were under observation.
“Instructions have been issued to seal Jamaat-ud-Dawa offices in all the four provinces as well as Azad Kashmir,” said interior ministry spokesman Shahidullah Baig, referring to Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
“Now the orders will be implemented.”
The home secretary for the southern province of Sindh, Arif Hassan Khan, said he had ordered the closure of nine offices there.
“We received orders from the federal government today to seal offices of Jamaat-ud-Dawa in Sindh province,” he said.
“Acting upon the federal government’s orders, we have ordered sealing of all the nine offices of Jamaat across the Sindh province.”
A senior police official said on condition of anonymity that the organisation’s main office in the southern city of Karachi had already been closed.
The JuD is widely believed to be a new front for the Laskhar-e-Taiba, which Indian authorities said masterminded the November 26 Mumbai siege that killed at least 195 people.
The four men against whom the UN ordered sanctions are Hafiz Mohamed Saeed, chief of the LeT, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, chief of operations, Haji Mohamed Ashraf, chief of finance and Mohmoud Mohamed Ahmed Bahaziq, a financier of the LeT who had served as the organisation’s leader in Saudi Arabia.
The first three were identified as Pakistanis and Bahaziq as a Saudi national.
Besides the JuD, the UN council also added to its sanctions list six entities it said were front organisations of the Al Rashid Trust and four of the Al-Akhtar Trust International.
Al Rashid Trust and Al-Akhtar International were blacklisted earlier. The two charity organisations are known to be active in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
India has alleged that Saeed and Lakhvi were linked to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
It had also claimed that the JuD was a front organisation for the LeT and requested the UN to ban the organisation and Saeed.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said earlier in the day Pakistan would comply with the UN Security Council decision.
“Pakistan has taken note of the designation of certain individuals and entities by the UN ... and would fulfill its international obligations,” a statement from Gilani’s office quoted him as telling visiting US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte.
Jamaat injected jihadi fervour into a separatist struggle in India-ruled Kashmir, and it developed strong ties with the Pakistani military’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, according to analysts.
Analysts say Indian doubts about the sincerity of Pakistan’s actions are inevitable given the ISI connections, and the Pakistani military’s reluctance to relinquish old assets.
Whether India and the US, which has previously put Lashkar and Jamaat on its own terrorist list, will be impressed by anything less than shutting down the charity and arresting all Lashkar and JuD leaders is questionable.
The US has engaged in intensive diplomacy to stop tensions mounting between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan and keep Islamabad focused on fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda on its border with Afghanistan.
Pakistan has said anyone arrested in Pakistan in connection with the Mumbai attack would be tried in the country.
Pakistan has banned Lashkar and organisations like it in the past, frozen their assets and arrested their leaders.
But they were later freed and the groups allowed to operate under new names.
Saeed quit Lashkar in December 2001 days before it was banned by Pakistan, but remained head of the charity that raised funds and attracted recruits.
The JuD is one of the most successful Islamic charities in Pakistan. It operates from a sprawling complex at Muridke, a town close to the eastern city of Lahore.
Pakistani security forces have arrested around 20 militants in raids on their camps and Jamaat-ud-Dawa offices, an intelligence official said yesterday.
Those arrested included two Lashkar operations chiefs India says planned the attacks carried out by 10 gunmen.
There was uncertainty over the whereabouts of Maulana Masood Azhar, the head of Jaish-e-Mohamed. Jaish and Lashkar were banned by Pakistan after being blamed for the December 2001 raid on the Indian parliament, which almost sparked a fourth war.
An intelligence official said that Azhar had been detained, but there was no other corroboration, and his status remains unclear.-Agencies
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