Founder of Pakistani militant group placed under house arrest

Pakistan put the founder of a militant group blamed for the Mumbai attacks under house arrest yesterday, responding to intense…

Pakistan put the founder of a militant group blamed for the Mumbai attacks under house arrest yesterday, responding to intense pressure to wipe out what India called "the epicentre of terrorism".

The detention of Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group, who now runs the Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity seen as its front, came after the United Nations placed him on its terrorism sanctions list.

"Police have encircled the house of Hafiz Saeed in Lahore and told him he cannot go out of the home. They have told him detention orders will be formally served to him shortly," Mr Saeed's spokesman, Abdullah Montazir, said.

India blames LeT for the Mumbai attacks which killed 179 people last month and also for earlier ones, including a 2001 assault on parliament that nearly thrust the nuclear-armed south Asian rivals into their fourth war since independence from Britain in 1947.

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A spokesman for Pakistan's central bank said directives had been issued to banks to freeze the accounts of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Mr Saeed and three associates included in the UN sanctions, which also impose a travel ban on the blacklisted individuals.

Police in Karachi and Hyderabad sealed the offices of Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Television reports said the charity would be banned, though no official announcement had yet been made.

But Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, speaking to parliament before the lower house passed a largely symbolic resolution condemning the attacks and pledging to find those responsible, said Pakistan's efforts had not been enough.

"We have to galvanise the international community into dealing sternly and effectively with the epicentre of terrorism, which is located in Pakistan. The infrastructure of terrorism has to be dismantled permanently," he said in comments that preceded Mr Saeed's house arrest.

India has been angry at what it sees as the Pakistani government's tolerance of militants, and Indian external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee said earlier yesterday that India had given Pakistan a list of 40 people it wanted handed over.

Asked by one deputy why India was not attacking Pakistan after so much proof of its complicity in fomenting trouble in India, Mr Mukherjee replied: "That is no solution."

Keeping up the pressure on Pakistan, US deputy secretary of state John Negroponte arrived in Islamabad yesterday to follow up visits by his boss, Condoleezza Rice, to India and Pakistan last week. Washington has engaged in intensive diplomacy to stop tensions from mounting between Pakistan and India, and to keep Islamabad focused on fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda.