UN-blacklisted charity in flood relief effort

ISLAMABAD: A banned charity on a UN terror blacklist, considered a front for the group blamed by India for the Mumbai attacks, said on Tuesday it was helping with the relief effort in Pakistan’s floods crisis.

Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) had sent 10-truck loads of relief goods and nine medical teams to affected areas of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, said its spokesman Yahya Mujahid.

The consignment was worth Rs5 million and sent from Lahore, the spokesman said.

“Our teams have evacuated up to 20,000 people from the worst-hit districts of Malakand, Charsadda, Nowshehra and Peshawar,” Mujahid told AFP.

The JuD is also providing hot dinners to those who are stranded. “We have
around 2,000 volunteers working in the affected regions,” he said.

The JuD was put on the UN terror blacklist in December 2008. India linked the charity to the 2008 Mumbai attacks and Washington considers it a terror group.

The JuD is known for its relief work after the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. It denies all terror accusations.

It is headed by Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who founded Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant faction blamed for the Mumbai attacks.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 4^th, 2010.