Pak puts Hafiz Saeed under house arrest in Lahore

Pakistani authorities, facing mounting pressure from the Trump administration , placed Mumbai attacks mastermind and Jamaat-udDawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed and four others under detention on Monday night. The action was taken under an anti-terrorism act.

A police officer said that Saeed, a co-founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), would be placed under house arrest and that his residence had been declared a sub-jail.

Saeed was at Lahore’s Masjid-e-Qudsia Chauburji when police descended there to implement the detention order issued on Sunday by Punjab province’s interior ministry in pursuance of a directive from the federal interior ministry on January 27, JuD activists said. A “heavy contingent of police has surrounded the JuD headquarters”, JuD official Ahmed Nadeem said.

A Pakistani defence ministry official said though Islamabad had not heard anything from the Trump administration, it had been feeling US pressure on the issue. “Trump is taking hard decisions against Muslim countries, there is open talk of actions against Pakistan also. So yes, this was a consideration,” he said. JuD member Nadeem, too, said, “This government has buckled under pressure.”

Pakistan interior minister Nisar Ali Khan said the PML-N government was taking steps to “fulfill our obligations” with regard to JuD.

“The organisation (JuD) has been `under observation’ since 2010-11. Since it has also been listed by the UN Security Council (Sanctions Committee), we are bound to take some steps. We are taking those steps to fulfil our obligations,” the interior minister told reporters. “The commanding police officer told us that he has with him the house arrest order of the JuD chief issued by the Punjab home department,” Nadeem said.