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Pakistan denies quake charity links to terror plot

Nirupama Subramanian

Charge cooked up to malign the country, says official

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Tuesday refuted reports linking those arrested in the alleged London terror plot to earthquake charities and relief work as an attempt to malign the country.

Foreign office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said the reports that U.K.-based Islamic charities had transferred funds to the terror suspects in Pakistan were "fabricated".

"These are all absurd stories. Somebody is cooking them up. The objective is to malign Pakistan and to cast a shadow on Pakistan's efforts to uncover and foil this terrorist plot," Ms. Aslam said.

The procedure of transferring earthquake relief related funds and their utilisation was "transparent", she said.

Dismissing as baseless reports that some of those arrested in connection with the plot travelled to Pakistan as volunteers of the Jamaat-ud-Daawa (JuD), Ms. Aslam reiterated that the house arrest of the JuD chief Haafiz Saeed had no connection with the ongoing investigations.

While the U.S had banned the JuD as a terrorist organisation, it had not shared with Pakistan evidence of the JuD's terrorist links, and the Government had no plans to ban the organisation, she said.

In Pakistan's view, the conspiracy to blow up the planes was hatched by Al-Qaeda "based" in Afghanistan, she said.

In what seemed to be a swipe at India, the spokeswoman said, "those who supported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan", which she described as the cause for extremism taking root in the region, were now spreading stories about Pakistan being a hotbed of terrorism.

Pakistan has as yet confirmed the arrest of only one person, Rashid Rauf, a British national, in connection with the plot.

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