 The Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) of Pakistan, a key component of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal coalition, could be in serious trouble with the military regime initiating action against some of its functionaries for alleged links with Al Qaeda and Taliban and the US agencies probing these connections, a media report said. Quoting unnamed security officials, monthly 'The Herald' magazine said "the US intelligence officers have already been mandated by the Bush administration to gather enough evidence of the party's suspected Al Qaeda connections to enable the US State Department to place the organisation on its terror watch list".
| I hope this doesn't mean they're just getting started on it. If I'd been in charge — we're all probably better off because I'm not — we'd have started around the end of September, 2001, when Qazi was calling out the turbans to riot in the streets... |
It quoted these sources as saying that the US Office of Counter-Terrorism was "busy making detailed inquiries into recent reports of JI office-bearers and cadres providing refuge to fugitive Al Qaeda elements in various parts of the country".
| Like Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad? |
While JI chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed, has denied any links with Al Qaeda or any other militant outfit, Pakistan's Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat, has asserted in the National Assembly that Pakistan's "religio-political" parties were supporting the Al Qaeda, according to their interviews published in the monthly magazine. Though Hayat said he had made no direct assertions against the JI, he said "the Jamaat has some explaining to do. Several wanted terrorists have been arrested from the houses of hardcore Jamaat activists and leaders at one time or another". |