Pakistan puts head of militant charity under house arrest

And eventually, Saeed walks away without any substantial legal charges pressed against him, and goes on to make provocative remarks about Kashmir and India.

Several Singapore Jemaah Islamiah members have trained in LeT camps.

After the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the listing of the JuD as a terror outfit by the UN, Saeed was put under house arrest from December 2008 to June 2009.

Had Sharif been honest about tackling terrorism, he should have handed over the JuD terrorist, who masterminded the 26/11 attacks, to India.

The move came after years of pressure on Pakistan from neighbour India, the U.S. and the United Nations to put the Jamaat-ud-Dawah leader on trial. “My arrest will give a fresh impetus to the Kashmiris’ struggle against India”, he said. In 2014, the JuD was designated a “foreign terrorist organisation” by the US State department.

“The house arrest of Hafiz Saeed will not, in any way, affect the movement”, DCP Chairman Maulana Samiul Haq said, adding that the move was “without any reason or justification” as courts had released Saeed.

The collection of evidence and legal proceedings that may follow against JuD and its charity wing the Falah-i-Insaaniat Foundation (FIF) should be completed without any delay. The action by Islamabad comes amid America’s Donald Trump’s ongoing crackdown on Muslim immigration to the States, with Pakistan said to have barely missed the list of countries which feature on US’ travel ban list.

A lawmaker with the major opposition party Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf, led by the country’s cricket hero Imran Khan, also protested against his house arrest. “As such, they must be placed under preventive detention”. Lahore High Court Bar and lawyers’ community strongly condemned the detention of Hafiz Saeed.

In recent months, Saeed has been holding regular news conferences to denounce a security crackdown in the Indian-controlled part of the divided Kashmir region. All of them were said to be affiliated with the JuD or LeT. Exercises such as yesterdays orders against Hafiz Saeed and others have been carried out by Pakistan in the past also.

Pakistani newspaper Dawn provides a fourth view to Hafiz Saeed arrest drama by bringing in the Chinese angle. Bar president Rana Zia Abdur Rehman alleged that the government’s step of putting Hafiz Saeed under detention was a cowardly act. He was placed under detention at least twice after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which killed 166 people.