MUZAFFARABAD: Pakistani authorities shut offices and arrested scores of activists of an Islamic charity as international pressure mounted for firm action against militants blamed for the Mumbai attacks, news reports said on Friday.
Some 250 activists of the outfit have so far been arrested, reported A Pakistan News.
The overnight raids followed Pakistan announcing it would abide by a U.N. decision placing Hafiz Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, on its terrorism sanctions list of people and organizations linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Saeed, who founded Lashkar in 1990 and officially left it 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 local news channels reported one of them is dead and another has been in a Saudi jail for the past three years.
An intelligence official told an England-based news agency 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 said: “I think they could have detained him to relieve pressure, but I don’t know the exact whereabouts of the Maulana.”
In various cities of Pakistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, police raided offices of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a charity regarded as a Lashkar front.
Police raided JuD offices 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 Jamaat-ud-Dawa’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.
this news published by www.apakisatannews.com
