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Friday, Dec 12, 2008
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Crackdown on Jamat-ud-Dawah

Nirupama Subramanian

Pakistan’s countrywide action follows U.N. sanctions

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan began a country-wide crackdown on the Jamat-ud-Dawah and placed its leader Hafiz Mohammed Saeed under house arrest on Thursday night following their designation by the United Nations Security Council as “terrorist.”

No formal ban has yet been announced, but Rehman Malik, who heads the Interior Ministry, told journalists that he had sent out orders that offices of the JuD throughout the country be sealed.

Saeed, who lives in Lahore and earlier in the day addressed a press conference to protest the UN’s decision against him, was placed under house arrest for three months.

Reports from Lahore said policemen had been posted outside his house.

Police have also sealed the Jamia Masjid Qudsia, the main JuD office in Lahore. It is unclear if the police have taken any action to shut down Muridke, the well-known main headquarters of the organisation near Lahore.

JuD offices in Karachi and Hyderabad in the Sindh province, and in Peshawar and Mansehra in the North-West Frontier Province have also been sealed.

In addition, the Karachi offices of the Al Rashid Trust and the Al Akhtar Trust, also named by the Security Council as fund-raising organisations of the LeT/JuD, have also been shut down.

Aside from Saeed’s house arrest, it is not clear if any other JuD leaders or cadres have been taken into custody. The cadres who normally ran the offices are said to have cleared out of the premises in the morning.

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