Fear of being whipped by Donald Trump, Pak detains Hafiz Saeed and may ban JuD
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, was on Monday night placed under house arrest in Lahore, his outfit said.
Earlier, Punjab government's Home Department had issued detention order of Saeed and Lahore Police have reached the JuD headquarters in Chauburji to implement the order, it said.
He "is at Masjid-e-Qadsia Chauburji and a heavy contingent of police has surrounded the JuD markaz (headquarters)," JuD official Ahmed Nadeem, who is present at the premises of the outfit, told PTI by phone.
Saeed has reportedly been held at Jamia Masjid in Chauburji in Lahore.
PUNJAB HOME DEPARTMENT ISSUED HOUSE ARREST ORDER ::
"The commanding police officer told us that he has with him the house arrest order of the JuD chief issued by the Punjab Home Department," Nadeem said.
Punjab government's action comes amid pressure from the Donald Trump administration to act against terror.
The Trump administration has put a ban on immigrants from seven Muslim majority nations that are 'most identifiable with dangerous terrorism taking place in their country' - Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Sudan. Reince Priebus, the White House Chief of Staff, has said that countries like Pakistan that are 'having problems similar to those seven nations', can be added to the list in future.
According to sources, government officials say that Pakistan government has been under pressure from the Trump administration to ban the militant outfit or face visa ban. This has prompted the Pakistan government to put him under house arrest.
Pakistan's Federal Minister for Interior Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said that the JuD was declared a terrorist outfit by the US last year and was under observation in Pakistan since 2010.
JuD is the front for the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror outfit, which is responsible for numerous terror attacks in India, including the Mumbai terror strike of November 26, 2008, which was masterminded by Saeed. He has been detained six times since the Mumbai carnage. In December 2008, UN Security Council, under its Resolution 1267, imposed sanctions on JuD and Hafiz Saeed for supporting the Al Qaeda and the Taliban. India had named Hafiz Saeed, LeT and JuD as the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack.
JuD has already been declared a foreign terrorist organisation by the United States in June 2014.
Earlier, reports of the ban on JuD were wrong, the group continues to be only on Pakistan interior ministry's "watch list". Order issued by Pakistani authorities is for "preventive detention" of Hafiz Saeed and 4 others, JuD still not banned.
As Twitter doesn't allow designated terrorists like Hafiz Saeed on its platform and blocks their Twitter accounts, they keep on changing their Twitter handles. @HMSaeedOfficial is one of the Twitter handles being used by Hafiz Saeed. Saeed tweeted on Monday from this account, "We knew this would happen when we declared 2017 the year of #Kashmir. If I am arrested, millions will continue to raise voice for #Kashmir."
This might well be a strategy to garner support and pressurise the Pakistan government from taking any strong measure against the terror mastermind or could be, again, an elaborate sham in collusion with the Pakistan's ruling establishment and the ISI to show to the world that Pakistan, at last, was going to crackdown on terror.
