Jamaat's leadership walks free in PoK

Just days after launching a crackdown on the Jamaat-ud-Dawah after the United Nations banned it, Pakistani authorities have released four detained workers and removed police guards deployed at the home of a senior leader of the organisation.

Authorities in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir released the four detained workers of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba's front organisation and also withdrew police guards posted at the home of the group's regional head, Maulana Abdul Aziz Alvi.

Chaudhry Imtiaz, the Deputy Commissioner of PoK capital Muzaffarabad, told the Dawn newspaper that police guards had been removed from Alvi's residence but he had been asked not to leave the area without informing the administration.

Alvi, who heads the PoK chapter of the Jamaat, was put under house arrest in his Karyan village on Thursday night.

"He had been placed under house arrest for security reasons. He is still under surveillance and cannot leave the station without prior intimation to the authorities concerned," Imtiaz said.

He said four persons taken into custody from a workshop run by the Jamaat in Muzaffarabad had been released because they were 'merely mechanics'.

Imtiaz said there were no instructions from the federal government to detain the 'regional or second-line leadership' of the Jamaat.

Authorities were only concerned about the 'top brass' and not the regional leadership, Imtiaz said.

Pakistan launched a clampdown on the Jamaat after a UN Security Council panel declared the organisation a front for the LeT and put four LeT leaders, including Jamaat chief Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, on a list of terrorists subject to sanctions.

Saeed and some top Jamaat leaders have been detained for three months in their homes and barred from travelling outside Pakistan.

Indian officials have pointed out that terrorist ideologues like Saeed have been detained in the past too without any action being taken against them. They have said that India will keep a close watch on the action that will be taken this time by Pakistani authorities.