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India-Pakistan

Punjab bans 23 militant outfits operating under new names

2010-07-07

ISLAMABAD -- The Punjab government has banned 23 militant organisations operating under new names after having been outlawed and directed police to keep a strict vigil on 1,690 office-bearers and workers of the outfits after including them in Schedule 4. According to the provincial home department, Jamaatud Dawa of Hafiz Saeed has not been restricted like others, but Saeed and his two associates have been barred from travelling abroad. Their accounts have been frozen and they will not be able to get arms licences. Sipah-e-Sahaba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Laskar-e-Taiba, Tehrik-e-Jafria, Harkatul Jihad Islami, Harkatul Mujahideen, Hizbul Tehrir, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Muhammad had been banned by the Musharraf government in 2002, but most of them started their activities under new names. It's like Pakistan has the world's largest 'Book of Synonyms' ... Sipah-e-Sahaba was renamed as Millat-e-Islamia Pakistan, Jaish-e-Muhammad as Alfurqan and Khuddamul Islam and Tehrik-e-Jafria as Islami Tehrik Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Taiba as Jamaatud Dawa. Hizbul Tehrir did not change its name. Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad have been active in the Indian-administered Kashmir and have also been blamed in terrorist acts inside mainland India -- Jaish-e-Mohammad in attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001and LeT in the Mumbai carnage of November 2008. While Jaish's chief Maulana Azhar Masood has been keeping a low profile since his organisation was suspected of making an attempt on the life of former military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf in December 2003, the LeT's Hafiz Saeed continues to be very active in the guise of various outfits even after the new organisation Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) was also was banned when the United Nations Security Council declared it a terrorist organisation in 2002.

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India-Pakistan

Britain wants to question Daniel Pearl's killer

2006-08-19

Britain’s MI5 has requested its counterpart in Pakistan to question Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, killer of American journalist Daniel Pearl, in connection with the abortive plot to blow up transatlantic flights bound for the United States. The British intelligence agency wants Omar Sheikh to be questioned because the London School of Economics graduate was the right hand man of Maulana Masood Azhar, founder of the Jaish-e-Mohammad. Omar Sheikh, who was arrested in February 2002 and sentenced to death in July that year for the murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter, has been shifted from Karachi Central Jail to a more secure colonial-era jail in Hyderabad, Sindh. Despite repeated requests for his extradition to the US, Islamabad has refused to oblige, fearing that American access to the condemned man could expose the Inter-Services Intelligence. An intelligence source said MI5 wants to know whether any of the 21 British nationals of Pakistani origin arrested in England had ever met Omar Sheikh. The query has been prompted by the fact that the 7/7 London suicide bombers, who had been influenced by two Britain-based militant groups — Hizbul Tehrir and its splinter group Al Muhajiroon — had visited Pakistan prior to the bombings. On their trip, they are believed to have visited two religious seminaries in Lahore and Faisalabad — the Jamia Manzurul Islamia and the Jamia Raheemia — both run by Jaish.

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Britain

NBC says July 21 suspects have a Pakistani link

2005-08-03

British authorities, NBC News reports, have new information suggesting the second set of accused London bombers may also be linked to Pakistan. According to Western counterterrorism officials quoted by the network, authorities now think the apparent leader of the July 21 bombing suspects travelled to Pakistan late last year. Muktar Said Ibrahim obtained a British passport last autumn. Officials say that in December he travelled from Britain to Saudi Arabia, then on to Pakistan. "It raises the possibility that they were involved with Pakistani jihadists and possibly even with Al Qaeda itself," Dan Benjamin, a terrorism analyst, is quoted as saying. That would put Ibrahim in Pakistan at the same time as two of the July 7 bombers, who were seen arriving in Karachi in November 2004. Purely coincidental, I'm sure. There's no proof, is there? The witnesses are all dead... Investigators who have evidence of the Pakistani links of the July 7 bombers are now trying to determine the extent of the other bombers' Pakistani connection. President Pervez Musharraf has rejected the projection of the London bombers as Pakistanis, saying that they were born and bred in Britain and were British, not Pakistani, citizens. It was the British government that had neglected the rise of intolerant and radical groups such as Hizbul Tehrir and Al Mohajiroun in Britain. I agree with Perv that both organizations should be banned, their members rounded up and deported to Antarctica. I don't agree with him that Pakland wasn't involved.

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Afghanistan/South Asia

Haroon Rashid is a major catch?

2005-07-20

The Pakistani police have arrested a major al-Qaeda figure who has suspected close links to the London bombers, according to The Times newspaper. According to the British daily, a senior Pakistani official said that the al-Qaeda figure who is a Pakistani was arrested during raids in Lahore and Karachi and was under interrogation over his alleged role in the 7 July attacks in London. The Pakistani authorities have denied the report. "We suspect two or three of the detained [from Lahore] had links with the bombers, but one in particular, who is a major figure in al-Qaeda. We are interrogating them intensively," the official told The Times. On Wednesday, Pakistani security officials denied the Times report saying that they had made no such arrest in Pakistan. The authorities in the UK have said that the simultaneous bomb blasts that were carried out on the London transport system "bore the hallmarks" of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, which carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Three of those believed to have carried out the attacks have been identified by the police as British-born Muslim men of Pakistani origin who all made recent trips to Pakistan. The police are trying to determine who they met during their visit. The fourth bomber is believed to be a Jamaican-born Muslim convert. The July 7 attacks in London left at least 56 killed and another 700 injured. In Pakistan, at least 139 people were arrested in the country-wide raids on hardline Islamists on Tuesday night that were conducted in the Sindh and Punjab provinces of Pakistan as well as Quetta and Islamabad. According to the police, among those arrested were suspected members of banned organisations such as Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, Jaish-i-Mohammad, Harkatul Mujahideen and Hizbul Tehrir. The arrests come as Pakistan's foreign minister Khursheed Kasuri travels to London for talks.

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Afghanistan/South Asia

HT activist eludes police

2004-11-04

Naveed Butt, a spokesman for Hizbul Tehrir, was able to elude the police on Wednesday, sources told Daily Times. "Feet, don't fail me now!" A police team had raided a hotel to arrest the activists of the banned organisation, but was unsuccessful. Sources claimed that Mr Butt and some women of the Jigranvi family had arranged a secret press conference in the hotel in which they stated that Hizbul Tehrir was only continuing the campaign for the sake of Iraq and to fight US oppression. An unidentified person had then entered the room and said something to Mr Butt upon which Mr Butt left. That would be Mahmoud the Rat. The police arrived a few minutes later and detained the women, who were later released. The coppers made the ladies show them their honkers, but left disappointed, since they'd come expecting to see Butt...

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Afghanistan/South Asia

Hizb ut-Tahrir leader's father arrested

2004-09-18

Intelligence agencies and city police arrested Hakim Habibur Rehman Jigranvi, father of Hizbul Tehrir activist Saad Jigranvi, on Friday afternoon. Sources told Daily Times that Hakim Jigranvi was arrested on the information provided by Yasir Jigranvi, who was arrested on September 15. Hakim has been shifted to an unknown location for interrogation. "Mahmoud! This is a bludgeon! I specifically asked for a truncheon!" "They're using all the truncheons down the hall on the Guantanamo returnees, sahib!" Activists of Hizbul Tehrir, a banned ooutfit, are wanted by the police for spreading anti-state propaganda. Earlier, police arrested two Hizbul Tahrir activists Abdul Waheed and Bilal Saleem for publishing anti-state pamphlets using two printing presses in Badamibagh. Acting on their information, police arrested Hakeem Ihsan Jigranvi's younger brother Hakeem Yasir Rehman Jigranvi from Gulberg on Wednesday. Another team raided Saad Jigranvi's residence but the house was empty. Yasir Jigranvi's wife Naila Yasir requested a district court session judge to issue production orders for her husband but a bailiff was unable to find him. A man testified that the police was trying to destroy evidence of Yasir's illegal detention and torture. He said Yasir had been shifted several times and was last seen at Chung Investigation Cell.

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