ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities, facing mounting pressure from the Trump administration, placed Mumbai attacks mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed and four others under detention on Monday night.
A police officer said that Saeed, a co-founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), would be placed under house arrest and that his residence had been declared a sub-jail. Saeed was at Lahore's Masjid-e-Qudsia Chauburji when police descended there to implement the detention order issued by Punjab province's interior ministry in pursuance of a directive from the federal interior ministry on January 27, JuD activists said. A "heavy contingent of police has surrounded the JuD headquarters", JuD official Ahmed Nadeem said.
A Pakistani defence ministry official said though Islamabad had not heard anything from the Trump administration, it had been feeling US pressure on the issue. "Trump is taking hard decisions against Muslim countries, there is open talk of actions against Pakistan also. So yes, this was a consideration," he said. JuD member Nadeem, too, said, "This government has buckled under pressure." Pakistan interior minister Nisar Ali Khan said the PML-N government was taking steps to "fulfil our obligations" with regard to JuD.
"The organisation (JuD) has been `under observation' since 2010-11. Since it has also been listed by the UN Security Council (Sanctions Committee), we are bound to take some steps. We are taking those steps to fulfil our obligations," the interior minister told reporters.
"We are going to shift Hafiz Saeed from Masjid Al-Qudsia Chauburji to his Jauhar Town residence to place him under house arrest on the orders of the government," a senior police official said. National flags were hoisted at the JuD offices in Lahore, instead of party flags, on the directives of the provincial home department, local media reports said. The provincial authorities have also started to remove JuD banners from Lahore's roads, the reports said.
Saeed is wanted by India and the United States for his alleged role in masterminding the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai that claimed 166 lives. He even carries a bounty of 10 million USD on his head for his role in the attack. Pakistan claims to have banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), but following the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2002, it re-emerged as Jamaat-ud Dawa (JuD). The United States has designated the JuD as a front for the LeT.
