Pakistan arrest alleged ring leader of Mumbai terrorists

Washington Post:

In a move aimed at diffusing tensions with India, Pakistani authorities arrested a suspected ringleader of last month's deadly attacks in Mumbai, along with rounding up several others in a massive raid on an alleged Pakistani terrorist group in the Himalayan territory of Kashmir, Pakistani officials, witnesses and members of the group said Monday.

Residents in the small Kashmiri town of Shawai Nala said dozens of Pakistani soldiers descended on a camp run by Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a Muslim aid organization suspected of funding the militant Pakistani group Lashkar-i-Taiba, about 3 p.m. Sunday. Mehboob Ahmed, a resident of the nearby city of Muzzaffarabad, the area's capital, said a Pakistani army helicopter gunship swept over the camp several times just before the ground was rocked by rocket fire and a fusillade of bullets fired by Pakistani forces.

According to local residents and a Jamaat-ud-Dawa member, Pakistani security forces arrested 22 people, including Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhwi, one of at least five Lashkar-i-Taiba members named by Indian authorities as the masterminds behind the brutal Mumbai assault. The attack on India's financial capital killed more than 170 people and wounded at least 230.

Police in Mumbai said last week that Lakhwi organized and directed the attacks from the camp near Muzzaffarabad. They said Lakhwi worked in coordination with Lashkar-i-Taiba commander Yousuf Muzammil, who directed part of the operation from a safe house in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi. At least 10 gunmen commandeered a fishing boat to ferry them from Karachi to Mumbai, where they launched a raid on two luxury hotels, a train station and a Jewish cultural center. Lt. Col. Baseer Haider, a spokesman for the Pakistani army, said that he was aware of the raid on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa camp but that the operation was being handled by Pakistan's Interior Ministry, the country's lead domestic security agency. An aide to Rehman Malik, Pakistan's top Interior Ministry adviser, said Malik was unavailable for comment early Monday.

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Amir Hamza, a central leader of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, confirmed that several of his group's members had been arrested in the Sunday raid. He said he could not confirm whether Lakhwi had been detained by Pakistani authorities and did not yet have details about the others arrested in the raid.

Hamza denied that Jamaat-ud-Dawa maintains ties to Lashkar-i-Taiba and said Jamaat-ud-Dawa leaders will hold an emergency meeting Monday to map out their response to the raid, which he described as a plot to undermine Jamaat-ud-Dawa's charitable work in Pakistani Kashmir and elsewhere.

"This is being done to appease India. This is part of U.S.-India conspiracy against Pakistan aimed at undermining the liberation of Kashmir," Hamza said.

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That last quoted statement indicates the misguided passions of those responsible for the mass murder for Allah attacks in India. It suggest that this "central leader" of the group with ties to LET supported the mass murders.

Arresting these guys is not about appeasement, it is about justice. That the movement leaders cannot comprehend this fact suggest that more terrorism will be on the way from this group, if Pakistan does not disband them completely this time.

Bill Roggio has more on the round up in Pakistan.