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Pakistan cracks down on LeT camp

suraj

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ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities on Sunday reportedly launched a crackdown on activists of the Lashker-e-Taiba and its front organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawah and raided some offices of the two groups in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. According to reports, security agencies and officials of the PoK administration conducted swoops on several offices of the two groups in Muzaffarabad and its surrounding areas. Local man Nisar Ali told Reuters the operation began in the afternoon in Shawai on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad, the capital of the PoK. "I don't know details as the entire area was sealed off, but I heard two loud blasts in the evening after a military helicopter landed there," Ali said. Security forces took control of LeT's central office, situated at Shawai Nullah, and captured 20 of its members, including several important commanders while many others succeed to flee, the Pakistani newspaper The Nation reported. The newspaper also said that Pakistanin soldiers had cordoned off the entire area and no one was being allowed to go there. Ambulances also rushed to the site of the incident but it could not be ascertained as to how many people were killed or wounded in the operation, said The Nation quoting its sources. When the newspaper contacted Deputy Commissioner of Muzaffarabad to confirm the military action, the official said that the district administration had neither any knowledge of this nor could give any information in this regard. However, an official with the Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity, which is linked to LeT, said security forces had taken over the camp. The development came days after the Indian and American governments urged Pakistan to crack down on the LeT, which has been linked to the Mumbai terror attacks that killed over 180 people and injured dozens. The only terrorist captured by Indian security agencies following the Mumbai attacks has said he was recruited and trained by the LeT. The US has stepped up pressure on the Pakistan government to act against Pakistan-based elements linked to the Mumbai attacks, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Senator John McCain reportedly telling Pakistani interlocutors that the administration needed to act urgently to address India's concerns about the terrorist strike. President Asif Ali Zardari has extended Pakistan's assistance in probing the Mumbai incident and pledged to act against any Pakistani individual found to be connected to the attacks. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pakistan_cracks_down_on_LeT_camp_Report/articleshow/3806108.cms

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Ghanta ! I dont think Pak army will ever destroy a camp like this. IMO they probably asked the terrorist to leave and then just brought down the structure ... if it happened at all.
exactly my sentiments
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how do you destroy camps of those who were sititng on policy discusison table just a day back..

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Will not hand over Dawood, Memon, Masood, says Pakistan Will not hand over Dawood, Memon, Masood, says Pakistan December 08, 2008 21:48 IST Pakistan today rejected India's demand to hand over three terrorists and criminals, including underworld don Dawood Ibrahim [images], saying that action would be taken against individuals found involved in terrorist activities under Pakistani law. Islamabad's [images] response to a demarche from India seeking the handing over of the three came hours after security forces launched a crackdown on Lashker-e-Toiba, arresting suspected Mumbai attack mastermind Zakiur Rehman Lakhwi and eight other militants. India had made the demand in the second demarche handed over to Pakistan in the wake of last week's terror attacks in Mumbai that killed over 180 people and injured dozens more. Pakistan's response, handed over by Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir to Indian High Commissioner Satyabrata Pal during a meeting this evening, indicated that Islamabad would itself take action against individuals if information provided by New Delhi [images] proved they were involved in terrorism, diplomatic sources told PTI. The sources said the reply stated that action would be taken against such individuals "with the ambit of Pakistani law". The response also stated that Pakistani authorities would act on any information provided by India on the Mumbai attacks, they said. The response also reiterated Pakistan's offer to conduct a joint investigation with India into the Mumbai attacks and for full cooperation, including intelligence sharing, the sources said. http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/dec/08pakistan-says-it-wont-hand-over-dawood-ibrahim-to-india.htm

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Seems like people are not going to be bluffed this time! LINK Pakistan Raids Group Tied to Attacks By JANE PERLEZ and SALMAN MASOOD Published: December 8, 2008 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — After mounting pressure from the United States and India, Pakistani authorities raided a camp run by the militant group suspected of carrying out the Mumbai attacks, Pakistani and American officials said Monday. The operation on Sunday appeared to be Pakistan’s first concrete response to the demands from India and the United States to take action against the militants suspected in the attacks, which have raised tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors to their highest point in years. The Pakistani authorities said that among those arrested was Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, who Indian and American officials say masterminded the attacks for the militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to a State Department official in Washington. American Embassy officials could not verify the claim, he said. Neither would Pakistani officials in Islamabad. A senior Pakistani security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said about a dozen people had been arrested in the raid, which took place in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir. The official at first said that Mr. Lakhvi, an operational commander for Lashkar, was among them, but later backed away from the assertion. Lashkar-e-Taiba was founded 20 years ago with the help of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies as a proxy force to challenge Indian control of part of Muslim-dominated Kashmir. American intelligence and counterterrorism officials told The New York Times that Pakistan’s spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, continued nurturing the group, even after 9/11, when the Pakistani government pledged to sever its ties with militant groups. While investigators and intelligence officials say there is no hard evidence linking Pakistan’s spy agency to the Mumbai attacks, they have pointed to Lashkar as the likely culprit. The Pakistani government has resisted the notion that Pakistani citizens may have been involved in the Mumbai attacks, and it has so far refused to hand over 20 criminal and terrorist suspects long demanded by the Indians. The raid on Sunday appeared to be the first step by the Pakistanis that at least tacitly recognized the American and Indian claims. Counterterrorism experts familiar with the behavior of the Pakistani security services said there was a need by Pakistan to be seen to be doing something to alleviate the American and Indian pressure, as well as to avert the possibility of an Indian military strike. Still, the effectiveness of that action might be less than India or the United States would like, they said. In the past, Pakistan detained militants under pressure from the United States and Britain, and then quietly let them go, said Sajjan M. Gohel, a director of the Asia-Pacific Foundation in London. A senior Pakistani official said the operation was part of a gradual effort to bring the militants under control. This accords with the general view among civilian politicians that Pakistan cannot afford to appear as if it is being coerced into shutting down militant groups that have been created to fight India. “Pakistan will do it at its own pace, not at gunpoint,†said a senior politician in the Pakistan Peoples Party, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak. Moreover, the politician said that the efforts by Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, to deal with the Mumbai attack were interpreted by the Pakistani public as an attempt to mollify the Indians rather than stand up to them. “The street is upset,†the politician said. For that reason, the government could not move too harshly against Lashkar-e-Taiba, he said. The murky relationship between Pakistani military and intelligence services and Lashkar seemed to contribute to the confusion over what actually happened during the raid and who had been detained, as well as to the official reluctance to discuss the matter. Whether law enforcement officers or soldiers were on the scene in Muzaffarabad was unclear on Monday. Most Pakistani news reports said a helicopter hovered near the compound. Some reports said the compound was run by Lashkar-e-Taiba, while others said it belonged to Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the related charity organization. On Sunday night, the senior official in the Interior Ministry, Rehman Malik, told the newspaper The Nation that he believed that the raid was being conducted by the local police, but that he was not sure. The information department of the Pakistani Army released a statement on Monday evening saying an “intelligence-led operation against banned militant outfits and organizations†was under way. There had been arrests, it said, and the results of investigations would be available “on completion of preliminary inquiries.†A resident near the compound told Dawn, an English-language newspaper, that she had heard an army helicopter over the area and then two or three loud explosions in the early evening. All the national newspapers reported Monday morning that Mr. Lakhvi, the Lashkar-e-Taiba leader, was among those who were arrested during the raid. Later in the morning, a senior security official confirmed that Mr. Lakhvi had been arrested, along with about a dozen others. But by the afternoon, after a meeting of the Defense Council of the Cabinet, a civilian body that includes the army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the security official said he understood that Mr. Lakhvi had not been arrested. At one point during the day, word spread that Mr. Lakhvi had eluded arrest. On Monday night, two members of the cabinet declined to confirm whether Mr. Lakhvi was in custody. If Mr. Lakhvi was indeed in custody, India and the United States would regard his arrest as a good first step, diplomats said. But his arrest along with the arrests of a handful of others would fall well short of fulfilling the expectations of Washington or New Delhi, they said. Mr. Lakhvi, who is in his 50s, fought in Afghanistan as a mujahedeen against the Soviet Union, said Arif Jamal, a visiting fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University and the author of a coming book, “Shadow War: The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir.†Mr. Lakhvi had not actually fought since 1989, Mr. Jamal said. He said Mr. Lakhvi possessed excellent organizational skills and a strong ideological commitment to the jihadist cause. “If Lashkar-e-Taiba was involved in the Mumbai attacks, Mr. Lakhvi would have an important role because of his organizational abilities,†Mr. Jamal said. Lashkar-e-Taiba, which regards itself as a wing of the charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, dismantled most of his training camps after 9/11, Mr. Jamal said. “They keep erecting mobile camps for training,†he said. Mr. Lakhvi was active in the relief effort organized by Jamaat-ud-Dawa after the earthquake in Kashmir in 2005. That was the last time Mr. Jamal said he had seen Mr. Lakhvi. A spokesman for Lashkar-e-Taiba, Abdullah Gaznabi, confirmed Monday that the Pakistani security forces had carried out a raid “under pressure from India and the United States,†but would say nothing specific about who or how many people had been detained. “We have already made it clear that the Lashkar has nothing to do with the recent attacks in Mumbai,†he said by phone from an undisclosed location, “and by constantly trying to drag our organization’s name into these is nothing but to malign it.†He also warned the government against sacrificing the cause of Kashmir, which has been disputed by India and Pakistan for more than 60 years. “Being Kashmiris, it is our right to use any part of the territory of Jammu and Kashmir for our just freedom struggle,†he said. The Pakistani authorities offered on Monday to send a “high-level†delegation to India for a joint investigation, the foreign secretary, Salman Bashir, said. Police officials in India, meanwhile, said they had identified the hometowns of all 10 known gunmen — all of them from Punjab Province in Pakistan — and said they had evidence further establishing the Pakistani origins of the men. “There are mailboxes from Pakistan, there are medical kits from Pakistan,†said Rakesh Maria, the joint police commissioner in Mumbai who is in charge of the case. “The rations — the flour, the rice — that has markings from places in Pakistan.â€

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