The founder of one of the most feared militant groups fighting in Kashmir accused the United States on Tuesday of pandering to India and being anti-Islam by branding the charity he now runs as a terrorist organisation. “All this is being done at the behest of India,” Hafiz Mohammad Saeed told Reuters in his first interview since the US State Department outlawed the Jamaatud Dawa charity and one of its affiliates earlier this month. “This decision is part of the anti-Islam attitude of America. Our only sin is that we are Muslims,” said Saeed. He insisted he had severed his links with Lashkar-e-Taiba.Pakistan banned Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2002 after the United Nations put it on a list of groups associated with Al Qaeda. Saeed resigned from Lashkar and became head of Jamaat. The US says Jamaat is just a front. Action would have been taken far sooner, according to Western sources, but establishing a legally watertight paper trail between Jamaat and Lashkar was painstaking work.
“Jamaat is not involved in any terrorist activity inside or outside the US,” Saeed said, speaking by telephone from Lahore. “We don’t have any direct quarrel or confrontation with America, but we want the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to be stopped,” Saeed said. He said his charity only gave moral support to those fighting foreign occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kashmir. Pakistan has said it won’t ban Jamaat until the UN proscribes it. The State Department says Jamaat also has links with religious militant organisations in Southeast Asia and Chechnya.