Calling all bounty hunters and those who may want to make a quick buck…here is the chance to capture this despicable murderer – Pakistani Hafiz Saeed. He can be seen walking, talking and working with the ISI of the Pak Establishment in Pakistan. Capture is preferable so that information can be twisted out of him.
So come one, come all…get this terrorist!
And oh..I forgot his brother-in-law, Hafiz Abdul Rahman Makki. The US Govt. is offering US$ 2 million for his capture.
News Report
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The United States has announced a $10 million reward for information leading to the capture of Hafiz Saeed, a Pakistani militant leader accused of orchestrating the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and who in recent months has emerged at the vanguard of a prominent anti-American political movement.
Wendy Sherman, the United States under secretary of state for political affairs, announced the reward for Mr. Saeed, described as the leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, during a visit toIndia on Monday. She also announced $2 million for information leading to the capture of Hafiz Abdul Rahman Makki, Mr. Saeed’s brother-in-law.
The reward was welcomed by Ms. Sherman’s Indian hosts, who have long pressed Pakistan to imprison or extradite Mr. Saeed. A spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs said it was a “strong signal” to Lashkar-e-Taiba and evidence of growing security cooperation between the United States and India. The Mumbai attacks killed 166 people, including six Americans.
But the reward is likely to further strain relations with Pakistan, which are currently being renegotiated following a border clash last November in which American warplanes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. And it met with a contemptuous reception among Mr. Saeed’s supporters, one of whom described the American reward as an “April fool’s joke” and ridiculed the notion that Mr. Saeed was a hunted man. “Hafiz Saeed and his aides are not fugitives,” said Hafiz Muhammad Masood, the central information secretary of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a religious charity that serves as a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba. “They are not living a secret life. They are living in Pakistan as free members of society.”
The Rewards for Justice program, which is administered by the State Department, has paid out $100 million to 70 informants who helped track down criminals since 1984. But the case of Mr. Saeed, a 61-year-old former engineering professor, is unusual because his whereabouts are not a mystery.
Unlike other figures at the top of the list, such as the Al Qaeda leader Ayman al- Zawahiri, who carries a $25 million reward, or the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, who is worth $10 million, Mr. Saeed lives openly in Lahore and travels freely. He has given numerous interviews, some on prime-time television, and addressed large crowds of supporters.
In recent months he has flitted between cities across the country to attend rallies organized by the Defense of Pakistan Council, a right-wing lobbying group that includes banned jihadist groups, religious parties and conservative politicians. The group’s aim is to influence politicians who are currently debating the future of Pakistan’s relationship with Washington in Parliament, and to prevent the reopening of NATO supply lines that have been closed since November.
The Defense of Pakistan Council rallies have alarmed Western diplomats and many Pakistanis, with their anti-American rhetoric and the presence of heavily armed jihadi fighters. The ease with which the group operates stoked media suspicions that it enjoys tacit support from the military, possibly as a means of pressuring Washington.
“Pakistan is facing very severe threats from both sides — India is one side, American and NATO forces are on the other and the agenda of both is Pakistan,” Mr. Saeed told the Financial Times at a rally in Rawalpindi last January. “We want to send a message to them that the defense of Pakistan is uppermost in our minds.”
In many ways, Mr. Saeed embodies Pakistan’s struggle to rein in homegrown Islamist militants. The former military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, banned Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2002 but it quickly reemerged under the guise of its charity wing, Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Attempts to prosecute Mr. Saeed for his alleged role in various attacks have failed, as have efforts to restrict his movements through house arrest. He has been subject to United Nations sanctions since 2008.
But the greatest problem lies in his ambiguous relationship with the military’s powerful intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. The ISI nurtured Lashkar-e-Taiba in the 1990s to fight Indian soldiers in Indian-occupied Kashmir and it quickly gained a reputation as a disciplined and effective militant unit. Unlike the Taliban, which follows the Deobandi school of Islam, Lashkar-e-Taiba adheres to the more austere Ahle Hadith creed, which is derived from the Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia.
Over the past decade the militant group has expanded its horizons to include attacks on Indian civilian targets, including the Parliament and a train station in Mumbai, as well as Western citizens and Jewish clerics. In Afghanistan, its militants have emerged as a factor in the war in the east of the country.
ISI officials insist they effectively lost control of the group after cutting their ties in 2002. But they have also failed to stop its fundraising and recruitment activities through Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which operates from the Muridke compound outside Lahore and has run substantial charity operations across Pakistan, particularly after an earthquake in 2005 and widespread floods in 2010.
In recent months, Jamaat-ud-Dawa activists have provided security and medical cover at Defense of Pakistan Council rallies. Meanwhile, seated alongside Mr. Saeed on the platform has been Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief and prominent jihadist ideologue.
Reporting was contributed by Waqar Gilani in Lahore, Pakistan, and Jim Yardley in New Delhi.
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