Pakistan authorities on Wednesday arrested Hafiz Saeed, the alleged mastermind of a four-day militant attack on the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, on terror finance charges, a spokesman for the chief minister of Punjab said.

The move came days before a visit to Washington by Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has vowed to crack down on militant groups operating in Pakistan.

Saeed, designated a terrorist by the United States, is the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or Army of the Pure, the militant group blamed by the United States and India for the Mumbai attacks, which killed more than 160 people.

He has denied any involvement and said his network, which includes 300 seminaries and schools, hospitals, a publishing house and ambulance services, has no ties to militant groups.

A spokesman for Punjab Governor Shahbaz Gill said Saeed was arrested near the town of Gujranwala in central Pakistan. </s> Authorities in Pakistan have arrested Hafiz Saeed, founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or Army of the Pure, the militant group blamed by the United States and India for a four-day attack on Mumbai in 2008, Geo Television said on Wednesday.

 

A spokesman for Jammaat ud-Dawa (JuD), a charity run by Saeed, said counter-terrorism officials arrested Saeed while he was on his way to the central Pakistan town of Gujranwala. The charges he faces are still unknown but appear to be linked to terrorism financing, the spokesman added. </s> Pakistan authorities on Wednesday arrested Hafiz Saeed, the alleged mastermind of a four-day militant attack on the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, on terror finance charges, a spokesman for the chief minister of Punjab said.

The move came days before a visit to Washington by Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has vowed to crack down on militant groups operating in Pakistan.

Saeed, designated a terrorist by the United States, is the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or Army of the Pure, the militant group blamed by the United States and India for the Mumbai attacks, which killed more than 160 people.

He has denied any involvement and said his network, which includes 300 seminaries and schools, hospitals, a publishing house and ambulance services, has no ties to militant groups.

A spokesman for Punjab Governor Shahbaz Gill said Saeed was arrested near the town of Gujranwala in central Pakistan.

“The main charge is that he is gathering funds for banned outfits, which is illegal,” the spokesman said.

Pakistan, which is included on the so-called “grey list” of the Financial Action Task Force, a money laundering and terror finance watchdog, has been under increasing pressure to stop the financing of militant groups.

The United States has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to Saeed’s conviction over the Mumbai attacks. </s> LAHORE: Pakistan authorities on Wednesday (Jul 17) arrested Hafiz Saeed, the alleged mastermind of a four-day militant attack on the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, on terror finance charges, a spokesman for the chief minister of Punjab province said.

The arrest came days before a visit to Washington by Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has vowed to crack down on militant groups operating in Pakistan.

Saeed, designated a terrorist by the United States and the United Nations, is the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or Army of the Pure, the militant group blamed by the United States and India for the Mumbai attacks, which killed more than 160 people.

He has denied any involvement and said his network, which includes 300 seminaries and schools, hospitals, a publishing house and ambulance services, has no ties to militant groups.

A spokesman for Punjab Governor Shahbaz Gill said Saeed was arrested near the town of Gujranwala in central Pakistan.

"The main charge is that he is gathering funds for banned outfits, which is illegal," the spokesman said.

The Punjab Counter Terrorism Department said in a statement that Saeed had been arrested while going to a court in Gujranwala to seek pre-arrest bail but was remanded in custody.

Pakistan, which is included on a so-called grey list compiled by the Financial Action Task Force, a money laundering and terror finance watchdog, has been under increasing pressure to stop the financing of militant groups.

However, an Indian government official said that merely arresting Saeed was not enough and that he should be put on trial and convicted.

"We want real action, not these kinds of steps that are reversible. One court orders his arrest, another frees him," said the official, who has close knowledge of diplomatic issues with Pakistan.

He said the sense in New Delhi was that Pakistan was taking steps such as these before Khan's trip to the United States, which has offered a US$10 million reward for information leading to Saeed's conviction over the Mumbai attacks.

"We have seen this before," the official said. "After the visit is over, things are usually back to what they were before."

In 2017, Saeed was put under house arrest by Pakistani authorities and subsequently released after being cleared of charges against him, drawing strong criticism from Washington and New Delhi.

Lashkar-e-Taiba, designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US State Department, aims to drive India out of the disputed region of Kashmir and establish an Islamic state across Kashmir, Pakistan, and India. </s> Hafiz Muhammad Saeed holds two master's degrees from the University of Punjab and a specialization in Islamic Studies and Arabic Language from King Saud University. (Photo: File)

Islamabad/Mumbai: The chief of Jamaat-ud-Dawa and co-founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba Hafiz Muhammad Saeed was arrested on Wednesday. India has always considered him as a most wanted terrorist because of his ties to LeT and his alleged involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the 2006 Mumbai train bombings and the 2001 Indian Parliament attack.

Hafiz -- a title bestowed upon people who know the Quran by heart -- was born to a conservative family in Pakistan Punjab in 1950. His family members were allegedly killed during their Partition journey from Shimla to Lahore.

His first big break came when Pakistani dictator General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq appointed him to the state-run Council on Islamic Ideology. Later, he was posted as professor of Islamic studies at the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore.

The university sent him to Saudi Arabia in the early eighties, where he began his journey as a jihadist, supporting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed holds two master's degrees from the University of Punjab and a specialization in Islamic Studies and Arabic Language from King Saud University.

In 1987, Saeed founded Markaz Dawa-Wal-Irshad, a part of the organisation Jamait Ahl-e-Hadis, which spawned the jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in 1990.

December 2001: Pakistan took Saeed into custody on December 21, 2001 due to an Indian government assertion that he was involved in the December 13, 2001 attack on the Lok Sabha.

He was held until March 31 2002, released, and then taken back into custody on May 15.

He was placed under house arrest on October 31 2002 after his wife Maimoona Saeed sued the province of Punjab and the Pakistan federal government for what she claimed was an illegal detention

August 2006: After the July 11, 2006 Mumbai train bombings, the provincial government of Punjab, Pakistan arrested him on August 9 2006 and kept him under house arrest.

He was released on August 28 2006 after a Lahore High Court order. He was arrested again on the same day by the provincial government and was kept in the Canal Rest House in Sheikhupura. He was finally released after the Lahore High Court order on October 17 2006.

November 26, 2008: Ten members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out synchronised attacks at multiple locations in Mumbai and killed 166 civilians. Nine militants were killed. Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab was the sole attacker to be caught alive.

December 2008: India sent formal request to United Nations Security Council to list Hafiz Saeed and his charity organisation, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), as known aliases of Lashkar-e-Taiba. India said, “The close links between the (two) organisations are of immediate concern with regard to their efforts to mobilise and orchestrate terrorist activities.”

Saeed denied this. "No Lashkar-e-Taiba man is in Jamaat-ud-Dawa and I have never been a chief of Lashkar-e-Taiba," he told a TV channel on December 10, 2008. The following day he was placed under house arrest, accused of having links to the 2008 Mumbai attacks which killed at least 166 people.

June 2009: The case against Saeed dragged on, until the Lahore High Court deems his containment to be unconstitutional, and ordered his release.

July 2009: The Punjab provincial government filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the release order.

August 2009: On August 25, Interpol issued a Red Corner Notice (RCN) against Saeed, which was intended to compel Pakistan to share information about crimes, criminals, and threats etc. with intelligence counterparts around the world.

September 2009: Saeed was placed under house arrest again.

October 2009: The Lahore High Court dropped all criminal charges against Saeed. It said there was not enough evidence, and that Jamaat-ud-Dawa is not a banned organization. This order came after India gave Pakistan information against Saeed which is based on the testimony of Kasab.

May 2011: In an effort to pressure Pakistan into action, India published a list of its 50 most wanted fugitives hiding in Pakistan.

April 2012: On 3 April, 2012, the United States placed a 10 million dollar bounty on Saeed. JuD and Lashkar-e-Taiba are both blacklisted by the US. The JuD, however, responded by describing the US move as “yet another attack on Islam and Muslims”.

February 2013: Saeed “lived an open, and apparently fearless, life in a middle-class neighbourhood” in Pakistan, according to this account by New York Times reporter Declan Walsh.

“I move about like an ordinary person — that’s my style,” Saeed, now 64-years-old, told the reporter.

January 2015: In a move towards the execution of the National Action Plan against terrorism, Pakistan’s interior ministry included the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Haqqani network on a list of banned outfits.

Saeed said the ban would make no difference and his party “will continue serving humanity on the same pattern.”

November 2016: Pakistan government banned the coverage of Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Saeed after the organisation was added to the international list of terrorist groups.

January 2017: On January 31, the Trump administration threatened to put Pakistan on the list of nations against whom an immigration ban is imposed because their citizens are seen as a threat.

A day later, Hafiz Saeed was put under house arrest by Pakistani authorities. The government announced that the 90-day detention period could be extended if needed.

September 2017: Pakistan banned Saeed’s new terror front Tehreek-e-Azadi-Jammu & Kashmir (TAJK). As JuD was earlier put on the list of proscribed organisations, Saeed was forced to run his activities under the TAJK banner.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif acknowledged that Hafiz Saeed, the Haqqanis and the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) are “liabilities” for the country, but Pakistan did not have the required “assets” to get rid of them.

October 2017: Lahore High Court warned that Saeed would have to be freed from house arrest unless enough evidence is generated against him.

November 2017: Approximately 10 months after his house arrest in January, Saeed was freed once again on the orders of the Lahore High Court. The high court overruled the government’s request to extend the detention period. The government said the release of a world recognised terrorist may trigger international sanctions against Pakistan.

June 2019: Financial Action Task Force (FATF) voiced concern over Pakistan's failure to do enough to contain terror funding in its soil and not registering cases against terror masterminds Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar under anti-terror laws.

July 2019: Pakistan arrested Saeed and has been sent to judicial custody. According to Pakistan’s media, he will face trial. </s> LAHORE, Pakistan, July 17 (Reuters) - Pakistan authorities on Wednesday arrested Hafiz Saeed, the alleged mastermind of a four-day militant attack on the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, on terror finance charges, a spokesman for the chief minister of Punjab said.

The move came days before a visit to Washington by Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has vowed to crack down on militant groups operating in Pakistan.

Saeed, designated a terrorist by the United States, is the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or Army of the Pure, the militant group blamed by the United States and India for the Mumbai attacks, which killed more than 160 people.

He has denied any involvement and said his network, which includes 300 seminaries and schools, hospitals, a publishing house and ambulance services, has no ties to militant groups.

A spokesman for Punjab Governor Shahbaz Gill said Saeed was arrested near the town of Gujranwala in central Pakistan.

"The main charge is that he is gathering funds for banned outfits, which is illegal," the spokesman said.

Pakistan, which is included on the so-called "grey list" of the Financial Action Task Force, a money laundering and terror finance watchdog, has been under increasing pressure to stop the financing of militant groups.

However an Indian government official said that merely arresting Saeed was not enough and that he should be put on trial and convicted.

"We want real action, not these kind of steps that are reversible. One court orders his arrest, another frees him," said the official, who has close knowledge of diplomatic issues with Pakistan.

He said the sense in New Delhi was that Pakistan was taking steps such as these before Khan's trip to the United States, which has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to Saeed´s conviction over the Mumbai attacks.

"We have seen this before," the official said. "After the visit is over, things are usually back to what they were before." (Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani in NEW DELHI Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Nick Macfie) </s> FILE – In this Friday, Oct. 26, 2018 file photo, Hafiz Saeed, founder of Pakistani religious group Jamaat-ud-Dawa addresses an anti-Indian rally in Lahore, Pakistan. Pakistani authorities say they have arrested Saeed, a radical cleric and U.S.-wanted terror suspect blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, just days ahead of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s trip to Washington. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary, File)

MULTAN, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan on Wednesday arrested a radical cleric and U.S.-wanted terror suspect implicated in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, officials said, just days ahead of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s trip to Washington.

Hafiz Saeed was taken into custody in Punjab province while traveling from the eastern city of Lahore to the city of Gujranwala, according to counterterrorism official Mohammad Shafiq.

Saeed founded the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, which was blamed for the Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people. His charity organizations, Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Falah-e-Insaniat, are alleged fronts for Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The United States has offered a $10 million reward for Saeed’s arrest and Washington recently stepped up pressure on Islamabad to crack down on terror groups.

In response, Pakistan registered over a dozen cases against Saeed and several of his associates, accusing them of funding militant groups through charities and leading to Wednesday’s arrest.

“After a ten year search, the so-called “mastermind” of the Mumbai Terror attacks has been arrested in Pakistan,” President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday. “Great pressure has been exerted over the last two years to find him!”

Prime Minister Imran Khan was to leave for Washington over the weekend on his first official visit to the United States as premier.

After his arrest, Saeed was taken before a judge and was ordered held in jail until the next hearing on Tuesday, Shafiq said. The cleric had been en route to Gujranwala to post bail in the terror financing case but was detained before he could do so.

In Pakistan, a suspect can be free on bail pending investigation and trial.

Saeed’s spokesman Nadim Awan denounced the arrest and said the cleric had dissociated himself from Lashker-e-Taiba in 2001 and has had no links with the organization since then. Lashker-e-Taiba was banned in 2002.

Awan said they would challenge Saeed’s arrest before a higher court.

Until the terror financing case, Saeed had for months lived freely in Pakistan, often addressing anti-India rallies for which he became popular amid a dramatic confrontation between the two nuclear-armed rivals earlier this year.

Saeed’s two charities were banned in February last year, and the government froze their assets in compliance with a U.N. request. Pakistan’s Supreme Court last September allowed them to resume operations only to be banned again earlier this year under a government action plan against terrorism and extremism.

Previously, Saeed had been detained several times, along with some of his close aides, but had not been charged or put on trial.

He was taken into custody in January last year and kept under house arrest for 11 months until a court order ended his detention in November. He was also detained in 2001 and 2008, when he was kept confined to a government-run house and at his home.

In recent months, the government also took over schools, mosques, seminaries and all properties linked to Saeed’s charities and froze their assets.

Pakistan is currently on the Financial Action Task Force’s grey list, denoting its status as a haven for money laundering. It has until October to avoid black listing.

Associated Press writers Zaheer Babar in Lahore, Pakistan; Zarar Khan in Karachi, Pakistan and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report. </s> Pakistani authorities Wednesday detained the alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, a security official said, as the country faces increased pressure to crack down on militants operating on its soil.

Firebrand cleric Hafiz Saeed — declared a global terrorist by the US and UN, and who has a $10 million US bounty on his head — was taken into custody following a raid by counter-terrorism forces in the eastern city of Gujranwala.

“Hafiz Saeed was going to Gujranwala to apply for bail in another case when he was arrested,” said a security official with knowledge of the arrest, who requested anonymity.

A spokesman for Saeed’s group, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), a wing of the militant organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), confirmed the arrest to AFP, but gave no further details.

Saeed has spent years rotating in and out of varying forms of detention, sometimes under house arrest, sometimes briefly arrested then released again by authorities.

But for the most part he has been free to move at will around Pakistan, enraging India which has repeatedly called for his prosecution over his alleged role in the 2008 attack that killed more than 160 people.

Lashkar-e-Taiba is accused by India and Washington of masterminding the four-day assault on Mumbai. Saeed has denied involvement.

The move against Saeed comes as Pakistan is facing a potential blacklisting by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) — an anti-money-laundering monitor based in Paris — for failing to do enough to combat terror financing.

FATF is set rule on its fate in the coming months after placing the country on a watchlist last year.

In February, Pakistani authorities banned Saeed’s Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation — charities that have long been considered fronts for militant activity targeting India.

Washington and New Delhi have long urged Pakistan to take action against LeT, which was banned by Islamabad in 2002 but re-branded itself as JuD and FIF.

And earlier this year, Pakistan arrested more than 100 suspected militants and shuttered hundreds of religious schools.

The arrests came during an ongoing crackdown on extremists, following clashes with India after a Pakistan-based group killed dozens of Indian security forces in a suicide bombing in Kashmir. </s> The United States has placed Pakistan's Milli Muslim League (MML) political party on its list of foreign terrorist organizations for its alleged links to a militant group blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

The State Department said in a statement on April 2 that it had designated Milli Muslim League (MML) as a foreign terrorist group because it was operating as fronts for Lashkar-e Taiba (LeT) which is also on the U.S. terrorist list.

Another group allegedly linked to LeT and operating in Indian-administered Kashmir, Tehreek-e-Azadi-e-Kashmir, was also added to the U.S. terrorist list.

"These designations seek to deny LeT the resources it needs to plan and carry out further terrorist attacks," the State Department said, adding that the groups' property subject to U.S. jurisdiction had been blocked and U.S. persons were prohibited from engaging in any transactions with them.

The United States and India blame Lashkar-e Taiba for an assault on the Indian financial capital in 2008 that left 166 people dead. The group’s founder, Hafiz Saeed, has denied involvement.

The United States has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Saeed, who formed the MML party last year.

Pakistan's election commission has not allowed the party to register, but its members have been participating in parliamentary elections as independent candidates.

A spokesman for MML expressed defiance toward the latest designations.

"Our party is not registered [by Pakistani authorities]... it won’t make any difference," Yahya Mujahid told the dpa news agency.

The development comes as relations between Islamabad and Washington deteriorated in recent months amid U.S. allegations that Pakistan is harboring Islamist militants who are launching attacks in neighboring Afghanistan, something which Pakistan denies.

With reporting by dpa
Pakistan arrests Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has been blamed by the United States and India for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks that left more than 160 people dead.