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LeT founder hits out at Musharraf regime

Nirupama Subramanian

Holds rare press conference in Islamabad

ISLAMABAD: Hafiz Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-daawah — banned by the United States, wanted by India, and on Pakistan's "watch list" — held a rare press conference on Sunday. He slammed the Musharraf regime for trying to "secularise" the country.

The conference was held at a top hotel in the capital and a lunch was thrown in for the reporters.

The invitation from the JuD made the specific request that Mr. Saeed not be photographed, which he repeated to journalists during the press conference.

Two television cameras and photographers present focussed instead on the audience and on the clerics who shared the head table with Mr. Saeed.

The former teacher of Islamic studies, who says he only heads the JuD and has nothing to do with LeT anymore, said he called the press conference to publicise his organisation's signature campaign against the recent Women's Protection Act, which is set to amend the draconian 1979 Hudood ordinances.

He said that more than 11 million people, of which three million were women, had put their signatures on a JuD campaign against the Women's Protection Act. The "success" of the campaign gave the lie to the Government's claim that the Act was for women, and had the backing of the people.

The Act was against the essence of the Koran and Sunna, and had no place in an "Islamic country." Even the 1973 Constitution did not allow a law that went against the Islamic "deen," he said, adding that the Government had hurriedly rushed through the law to please the U.S. and to "secularise" Pakistan.

The "biggest problem" facing Pakistan, according to Mr. Saeed, was that the Sharia had not been implemented.

He was reluctant to speak about anything other than the JuD's signature campaign. He denied comment on the capital's Lal Masjid controversy, in which a hardline cleric has made the same demand as he for the implementation of the Sharia, as the Government was negotiating with the mosque on the issue.

To another question, he characterised the recent U.S State Department report that included LeT as an organisation that continued to operate out of Pakistan as not "properly informed."

But when a reporter accused him of giving up `jihad' on the "orders" of the Americans, he said: "Koi kaam bandh nahi hua hai, inshallah, na hoga (Nothing has stopped, and God willing, will never stop)."

Asked about conciliatory statements of the former prime minister of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Sardar Qayyum, towards India on the Kashmir issue, Mr. Saeed said the "Mujahid-e-Awwal" (the first Mujahid) seemed to have backtracked on his own earlier statements. "But don't worry, he will also backtrack on the statements he is making now."

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