Bid to assassinate Hafiz Saeed foiled

LAHORE: A plan to kill Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, leader of the banned organisation the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JD), was foiled when worshippers apprehended a suspicious-looking person at a Jamaat-ud-Dawa mosque. The person was allegedly intent on monitoring Saeed’s activities and security measures taken to protect him.

Talking to The Express Tribune, the senior superintendent of police at Civil Lines Haider Ashraf said that on Friday worshippers had caught a man wearing a commando jacket and acting suspiciously at Jamiatul Qadsia, a Jamaat-ud-Dawa mosque. Ashraf said the suspect was pretending to be a member of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. When people asked him to prove his identity he could not come up with a satisfactory answer, and the worshippers detained him.

Ashraf said the suspect told the Jamaat-ud-Dawa members that he was a member of a militant organisation working for the Taliban. He confessed that his name was Rizwan, and said he had been monitoring Hafiz Saeed’s activities because his outfit was planning Hafiz Saeed’s assassination, for which they needed basic information. Hafiz Saeed was present at the mosque when the suspect was caught.

After they had spoken to Rizwan for some time, JD workers called local police and handed him over for interrogation. According to reports, Rizwan has now been shifted to an unknown location.

Law enforcement officials told The Express Tribune that Rizwan belonged to a group that had earlier been attached to the banned outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), but had recently disassociated itself from Hafiz Saeed and started militant operations against Pakistan with the Taliban.

Officials said that after Rizwan had completed his surveillance he intended to report back to his accomplices in North Waziristan, who were ultimately planning to kill Saeed.

Intelligence officials said a ‘foreign intelligence agency’ was behind the assassination plot, and had used the Taliban’s network to try and achieve its goal. Officials said they were working on arresting other terrorists involved in the plot using intelligence given to them by Rizwan.

However, speaking to The Express Tribune, Jamaat-ud-Dawa spokesman Yahya Mujahid denied that anyone was arrested on the premises of the Jamiatul Qadsia. He said he had no information on anyone arrested outside the mosque, and stated that Hafiz Saeed was an independent citizen after a court verdict had declared that he should be released from custody.

On May 25, the Supreme Court upheld the Lahore High Court’s decision that Hafiz Saeed be released from custody. The SC had dismissed appeals filed by the government against the release of Saeed, the alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The court had ruled that the government had failed to provide sufficient evidence against Saeed.

India was disappointed with the SC verdict, with External Affairs Minister SM Krishna saying: “Naturally we are disappointed with the Pakistan Supreme Court dismissing the appeal of the government of Punjab [against Saeed’s release]. We still regard Hafiz Saeed as one of the masterminds of the Mumbai terror attack.”

Published in the Express Tribune, June 2nd, 2010.