Egypt attack to spur on Saudi-backed Muslim military alliance against extremism and terrorism

November 27, 2017 Article

Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on Sunday a terrorist attack on an Egyptian mosque that killed more than 300 worshippers would galvanise an Islamic military coalition that aimed to counter “terrorism and extremism”.
Top defence officials from 40 Muslim-majority nation’s met in Riyadh on Sunday. They are part of an alliance gathered together two years ago by Prince Mohammed, who is also Saudi defence minister.
The crown prince has said he would encourage a more moderate and tolerant version of Islam in the ultra-conservative kingdom.
Prince Mohamed told delegates that Friday’s attack in Egypt “was a very painful occurrence and must make us contemplate in an international and powerful way the role of this terrorism and extremism”.
Gunmen carrying the flag of Islamic State attacked the mosque in North Sinai.
The group of Muslim nations, called the Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition, has yet to take any decisive action.
Officials say the group would allow members to request or offer assistance to each other to fight militants. This could include military help, financial aid, equipment or security expertise. The group, which will have a permanent base in Riyadh, would also help combat terrorist financing and ideology.
“The biggest threat from terrorism and extremism is not only killing innocent people and spreading hate, but tarnishing the reputation of our religion and distorting our belief,” Prince Mohammed told officials from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Additional Support 
Iraq and Syria, at the forefront of the battle against Islamic State, are not members, nor is mainly Shi’ite Muslim Iran, the regional rival to mostly Sunni Saudi Arabia.
Qatar, originally part of the alliance, was not invited to Sunday’s meeting after Riyadh led a group of states seeking to isolate Doha, saying it supported terrorism. Doha denies this.
Abdulelah al-Saleh, a Saudi lieutenant general and the coalition’s secretary general, said Qatar was excluded to help build a consensus for launching operations. He also said the group was not aimed at creating a Sunni bloc to counter Iran.
“The enemy is terrorism. It’s not sects or religions or races, its terrorism,” Saleh told reporters.
Saleh said military initiatives had been proposed to the group’s ministerial council, but he did not elaborate.
Ulterior motives 
Despite agreement on principles, members voiced different priorities at the meeting. Yemen’s delegation said the focus should be Iran, al Qaeda and Islamic State, while Turkey called for “support from our friends” against Kurdish separatists.
Critics say the coalition could become a means for Saudi Arabia to implement an even more assertive foreign policy by winning the backing of poorer African and Asian nations with offers of financial and military aid.
Alongside leading a diplomatic charge against Qatar, Saudi Arabia is also leading a war against Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in its neighbour Yemen, Saleh said Riyadh would pay the 400 million riyal ($107 million) bill for the coalition’s new centre, but said other nations could offer financial support for specific initiatives.

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Categories: Egypt, mosque, News, Saudi Arabia, terrorism

Google broadens takedown of extremist YouTube videos

November 21, 2017 Article

Google in the last few months has begun  removing from YouTube extremist videos that do not depict violence or preach hate, YouTube said on Monday, a major policy shift as social media companies face increasing pressure from governments.
The new policy affects videos that feature people and groups that have been designated as terrorist by the U.S. or British governments but lack the gory violence or hateful speech that were already barred by YouTube.
A YouTube spokesperson, who asked not be named for security reasons, confirmed the policy in response to questions. The company would not specify when the policy went into effect.
As YouTube terms already barred “terrorists” from using the  service, the new policy keeps out videos uploaded by others  that militants likely would try to distribute if they could have accounts, according to the spokesperson.
Hundreds of videos of slain al Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki lecturing on the history of Islam, recorded long before he advocated violence against the United States, were among those removed under the new policy, the spokesperson said.
Governments and human rights groups have pressed YouTube for years to crack down on extremist videos. They argue that the propaganda radicalised viewers and contributed to deadly terror attacks.
British Home Secretary Amber Rudd amplified the pressure during visits with tech companies in Silicon Valley in July and a speech in Washington, D.C. last week. European Union and U.S. lawmakers this year have threatened consequences for tech companies if concerns are not addressed.
Legislation could resemble a German law approved in June to fine social media companies 50 million euros (44.47 million pounds) if hateful postings are not promptly removed.
YouTube said discussions with outside experts prompted the new policy, but it was unclear why the company decided to act only recently. In June, the company announced that “inflammatory religious or supremacist content” that did not violate its policies would be allowed with warning labels and a restriction making them ineligible for ad revenue.
At the time, Google General Counsel Kent Walker said in a blog post, “We think this strikes the right balance between free expression and access to information without promoting extremely offensive viewpoints.”
The latest step goes farther and was praised by critics such as Paul Barrett, deputy director of the New York University Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.
“If the terrorist is in the business of recruiting and inciting people to make violent attacks, you’ve got to the draw the line” against any of their content, Barrett said.
The new policy does not affect news clips or educational videos about terrorism. But YouTube will not always have an easy time distinguishing, experts said, pointing to tactics such as overlaying extremist commentary on news footage to get around censors.
YouTube has resisted imposing more editorial control because it fears making it harder for important videos to get a wide audience, Juniper Downs, YouTube’s global director of public policy, told a San Francisco conference sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League on Monday.
“We will lose something very valuable if we completely transform the way these platforms work,” she said during a panel discussion.
Internet freedom advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have urged tech companies to be cautious and transparent in responding to government pressure.
YouTube is relying on government lists of terrorists and terrorist groups for enforcement. Content moderators check the listings and make removal decisions after fielding reports from an automated system, users or partner organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and The Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
Al-Awlaki, whom the U.S. killed in a 2011 drone strike, was designated a terrorist by the U.S. Treasury the year prior.
The New York Times first reported the removal of al-Awlaki videos.

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Categories: counter-extremism, cyber-security, News, online radicalisation

Polish President Denounces Anti-Semitism, Xenophobia and Racism Following Far-Right March

November 20, 2017 Article

Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Monday there was no place in Poland for xenophobia, anti-Semitism and “sick nationalism”, denouncing hate speech at a nationalist march in Warsaw in comments later echoed by ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
 
Jewish groups have called on the Polish authorities to condemn the message of banners with slogans such as “pure blood, clear mind” or “Europe will be white or uninhabited” that some nationalists carried at a march on Nov. 11 – the anniversary of Polish independence from Russia, Austria and Germany at the end of World War One.
 
Tens of thousands of demonstrators attended a march through Warsaw organised by far-right groups on Saturday, carrying flares and Polish flags, many chanting anti-migrant slogans.
 
The Independence March has become an annual event in recent years, separate from official ceremonies to mark the holiday, and has attracted many people apart from far-right sympathisers.
 
The government of the right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS) condemned the racist banners, but not the march itself. PiS won election in 2015 partly thanks to support from younger voters, who have increasingly embraced right-wing views in recent years.
 
“Extremely bad incidents have taken place,” Kaczynski said, calling the banners a marginal phenomenon and “disgraceful rubbish”. “Polish tradition – the one we invoke – has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, we are as far as possible from that, nothing to do with racism.”
He also said that tens of thousands of “decent” people had come to the march to express their attachment to Poland.
 
The PiS government refused to take in migrants mostly from the Middle East and North Africa under an EU relocation deal, arguing that it could put public safety at risk. The party enjoys the steady support of more than a third of Poles.
 
Poland was for generations home to one of Europe’s biggest Jewish communities, until nearly all perished in Nazi death camps during German occupation in World War Two.
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) lobby group urged Polish authorities on Monday to speak out against the far-right, saying it threatened “the core values of Poland and its standing abroad”.
 
Duda responded to the banners by saying: “There is no place or permission or in our country for xenophobia, there is no permission for sick nationalism, there is no place for anti-Semitism … Such attitudes mean an exclusion from our society.”
 
Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said marches to celebrate Independence Day were important and should not be marred by “absolutely unacceptable” banners. The PiS spokeswoman said no one with such banners should have taken part in the march.
 
 

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Categories: anti-Semitism, Antisemitism, Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawieck, Far Right groups, Law and Justice Party, nationalism, News, PiS, Warsaw, Xenophobia

German groups mobilise against rise of anti-Muslim Far Right party

November 20, 2017 Article

German civil rights groups are mobilising against the newly elected far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and other more hardline groups, vowing to avert the even stronger rightward lurch seen in neighbouring countries.
Thousands of protesters are expected in the eastern city of Dresden on Saturday when the anti-Islam PEGIDA movement  celebrates its third anniversary.
PEGIDA – Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West – has seen dwindling crowds since early 2015, with the AfD absorbing some of its supporters. The AfD won almost 13 percent of the vote in the Sept. 24 national election, making it the third largest party in the Bundestag, or lower house of parliament, and the first far-right party to win seats in more than half a century.
Exit polls showed that 60 percent of AfD voters cast a “protest vote”, with many angry at Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to allow in over a million mainly Muslim migrants.
Experts say the party’s rise is also part of a global trend that has brought right-leaning parties or leaders to power in Poland, Hungary, and most recently, Austria.
Germany’s mainstream parties have said they will not work with the AfD at a national level, but activists say they must stake out clear resistance to AfD comments on Islam and other issues in the parliament, and 14 out of 16 state legislatures.
“We’ve seen a strong and growing movement of people resisting the AfD in recent months in big cities, in small towns, and now we need that movement on a national scale,” said Nora Berneis of Aufstehen gegen Rassismus, or Standing up against Racism.
The group is planning a large protest in the northern city of Hanover on Dec. 2 when the AfD meets for a party conference.
The party has drawn sharp criticism from a German journalists’ group for seeking data on the ethnic backgrounds and political views of journalists who want to cover the conference.
CIVIC EDUCATION
Christoph Schott, with the global activist group Avaaz, said more than 500,000 people had signed an open letter to the AfD, rejecting the party’s “xenophobic” and “racist” messages.
The AfD rails against what it calls the “Islamisation of Europe” and denies it is racist.
Beginning with Allied “re-education” efforts after World War Two, Germany has developed an intense civic education programme.
The government doubled funding for projects aimed at combating right-wing, left-wing and Islamist extremism to over 100 million euros in 2017 alone. Some credit such policies with keeping support for far-right parties lower than in neighbouring countries.
But Axel Ruppert with the European Network against Racism said the AfD’s aggressive rhetoric was pressing the boundaries of “acceptable” discourse and hate crimes were rising.
Police data showed a 14-percent rise in right-wing extremist violent acts in 2016, and anti-Semitic crimes rose 4 percent to 681 in the first eight months of 2017.
The AfD’s entry into parliament has triggered a long-overdue dialogue about what went wrong during the unification of eastern and western Germany in 1990, said Michaela Glaser with the German Youth Institute, a non-profit research association.
“One silver lining … may be that things that were hidden before have become visible. And only if something has been articulated can it be addressed,” she said.

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Categories: far right extremism, Far Right groups, News

Thousands of children referred to UK’s counter-terrorism scheme, figures show

November 17, 2017 Article

Thousands of children and teenagers, including large numbers of girls, were referred to Britain’s often-criticised counter-terrorism programme Prevent, new official figures showed on Thursday.
Prevent is a key strand of Britain’s security strategy which was launched in 2003 to combat extremism after the Sept 11 attacks on the United States. It has grown in prominence since the 2005 suicide attack on London’s transport network which killed 52 people and the rise of the Islamic State in recent years.
It has been dogged since its inception by claims that it is used to spy on Muslim communities and a 2015 government edict  instructing public bodies such as schools, health workers and universities to report concerns further exacerbated those fears.
The first official Prevent figures from Britain’s Home Office (interior ministry) showed that of the 7,631 individuals thought to be at risk of being drawn into terrorism from April 2015 to March 2016, almost a third were children.
Of all those referred, only five percent, the 381 assessed to be the most at risk, were eventually deemed to need support from specialist mentors in the voluntary, de-radicalisation scheme known as Channel.
Some 63 individuals withdrew from the process and the Home Office said there was no data about whether they or any others who had been referred to Prevent or gone through the Channel process had later gone on to be involved in extremism.
Two-thirds of Prevent referrals were made over fears of Islamist extremism and 10 percent because of far-right concerns. The vast bulk came from the education sector and police, with 2,127 aged under 15, including 532 girls, and 2,147 aged 15 to 20, with 420 female.
A senior Home Office official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, cited the case of a nine-year-old boy who had been referred to Prevent after he stood up in class and said he supported Islamic State.
The boy, who had been bullied at school, had been watching IS execution videos after searching for news coverage after the Paris attacks. After a year of support, his life was turned around, the official said.
“NOT IDEOLOGICAL”
“In the last two years the number of teenagers has spiked and the number of teenagers that I’ve had who are on the autistic spectrum has also spiked,” one of Channel’s Islamist mentors, told reporters.
“What IS and these groups have understood is young people need narratives and they’ve created narratives which make a very complex world seem very simple.”
Britain suffered four militant attacks this year that killed 36 people – the deadliest spate since the London “7/7” bombings of 2005.
Britain’s Home Secretary has been meeting representatives of leading U.S. tech firms Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter in Washington this week as part of her ongoing effort for them to do more to tackle online extremism.
A Prevent coordinator said the proliferation of extremist online content was an accelerant rather than a cause.
“It’s the petrol going on the fire, but it’s not the tinder which sparks the flame in the first place,” he said.

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Categories: children, counter-extremism, counter-terrorism, far right extremism, Far Right groups, News, Prevent

How A Boarding School in Indonesia Generated a Global Jihad

November 12, 2017 Article

We know that specific institutions have on many occasions been the generator for producing radicalised individuals who go onto commit terrorists attacks. Another such institution based in Indonesia which has generated militants from Indonesia to Syria, has been the Ibnu Mas’ud boarding school where Muslim students are provided with boarding facilities, food and religious education. 

Ibnu Mas‘ud is one of about 30,000 Islamic boarding schools, or ‘pesantren’, across Indonesia. Many of these ‘pesantren’ provide much needed care and basic items for young people though Indonesian officials admit that a handful have generated young people who have actively been involved in terrorism and in the promulgation of extremism.

The chart below shows the radical alumni that have graduated from Ibnu Mas’ud. These radical alumni took two routes, one to set up local bases in Indonesia, with a second batch moving onto fighting with Daesh or the Islamic State. 

The radical alumni include individuals present in the Aceh training camp for Indonesian militants which was commanded by an individual called Dulmatin. Implicated in the Bali bombings that killed 202 people, Dulmatin had a bounty of $10 million on his head. Fearing an attack from militants in the Aceh camp against Government buildings and assets, a Government raid was conducted in 2010, leading to the capture of a number of militants who had studied at Ibnu Mas’ud. These included:

  • Hari Budiman: Jailed for 5 years for financing the Aceh camp,
  • Kamaludin: Jailed for 6 years for bank robberies to fund the militant training camp
  • Sofya Tsauri: Jailed for supplying weapons to militants
  • Enceng Kurnia: a logistics expert and a militant Islamist
  • Agus Kasdianto: Involved in the failed Jakarta bomb plot and for sustaining the terrorist camp.

Graduates of Ibnu Mas’ud who went onto fight for the Islamic State included:

  • Hatf Saiful Rasul: A 12 year old who fought and died in Syria for IS
  • Umar Jundal Haq: The son of a Bali bomber, who joined IS and who died in Syria
  • Didi Resdianto: Who travelled to Syria with his family and whose wife became a cheerleader for the Islamic State online

The Indonesian Government increasingly realises the internal threat to its own population and to the stability of the country by radical and extremist preachers and institutions. The fact that Indonesia remains a possible staging post for such militants to export young men for a global Jihad, will no doubt remain on the minds of Indonesian officials. 

 

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Categories: Aceh, Aman Abdurrahman, Daesh, Dulmatin, Ibnu Mas'ud, Indonesia, Indonesian, Islamic State, News, pesantran

Tehrik-e-Labaik Islamist Party in Pakistan Lionises the Murderer of Glasgow Shopkeeper, Asad Shah

October 30, 2017 Article

The murder of Asad Shah, the Glasgow based shopkeeper was a brutal affair. We know this, partly because the spiritual leader of the Islamist group Tehrik-e-Labaik, Allama Khadim Hussain Rizvi, described in detail the actions that the convicted murderer, Tanveer Ahmed, undertook on the defenceless Shah.

The description of the murder of Asad Shah was not made in dusgust by Hussain Rizvi, the spiritual leader of the Islamist group in Pakistan. Yet, it was made in a manner which lionised the murderer, calling him a ‘Ghazi’ or warrior for the defence of Islam.

In September of this year, the Islamist party won over 7,000 votes in a local election and the Party was born from lionising another convicted murderer, Mumtaz Qadri. Qadri was the bodyguard of Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab, who subsequently went onto murder him at an Islamabad market in January 2011. Taseer was an outspoken critic of the country’s Blasphemy Laws and he had defended the rights of Christian minorities and individuals like Asia Bibi. Out of this brutal murder was born the Tehrik-e-Labaik Islamist party which has also acquired recorded phone conversations with Tanveer Ahmed, from Barlinnie prison in Scotland. Ahmed’s ‘messages’ to people in Pakistan have been played to Tehrik-e-Labaik audiences in the country who sit around their spiritual leader Hussain Rizvi. Rizvi has used the audio-tapes to whip up his audiences into frenzies, using deeply emotive language around the defence of Prophet Muhammad, whilst urging listeners to defend their faith. This has been code for the use of threats and violence.

The recorded phone conversations are used to whip up audiences into a frenzy around Hussain Rizvi who regularly has made a point of lionising Tanveer Ahmed,  now in Barlinnie prison. The main theme for Tehrik-e-Labaik has been the ‘defence’ of Islam and the vilification of those who ‘blaspheme’ against Islam, yet it is so easy to forget the brutal actions of people like Ahmed in this extremist charade which is being played out in Pakistan. It is important to reflect on the comments of Judge Lady Rae who presided over the murder trial of Tanveer Ahmed.

Summing up after the guilty verdict of Ahmed, Judge Lady Rae told him:

“This was a barbaric, premeditated and wholly unjustified killing of a much loved man who was a pillar of the local community.”

“He, (Asad Shah), was described as a peaceful and peace-loving man and family man who went out of his way to show respect for those of any faith.”

The Judge went onto describe the actions of Ahmed as being,

“an appalling display of merciless violence”.

Campaigning Using the Imagery of Murderers and Extremists

The use of imagery depicting Qadri and Ahmed demonstrates a chilling new twist in Pakistani politics with mobs of young men openly stating that blasphemers against Islam should be targeted for violence. Tehrik-e-Labaik’s footsoldiers are mainly young men brought up in their madrassas and whose only access to basic shelter, food and welfare comes from their networks on the ground. Yet, the link to the United Kingdom and the lionising of an extremist murderer who drove from Bradford to Glasgow to brutally murder a man just because he disagreed with his religious views, shows how such groups in Pakistan are trying to promote their extremism to British born young men of Pakistani heritage. Tehrik-e-Labaik’s You Tube videos are still available on the channel and their Facebook page regularly pumps out sermons from Hussain Rizvi which support violence against ‘blasphemers’. The promotion of such extremist material, aimed at Pakistani and British audiences of Pakistani heritage is deeply worrying. This international arc supporting the promotion of extremism needs to be countered and electronic disruption action taken to stop this group from pumping out such material.

Finally, the picture associated with this article is a good indicator of the extremism link to this group. Reuters recently interviewed Muhammad Shafiq Ameeni, a candidate and member of the Tehrik-e-Labaik party in Pakistan. The interview took place in Peshawar and behind Ameeni, were the images of two murderers, namely Mumtaz Qadri and Tanveer Ahmed. So the point is this. Would you consider supporting a party that lionises and campaigns using the imagery of convicted murderers? The answer should be no, but for 7,000 local individuals in Pakistan who voted for this Islamist group, they clearly thought to the contrary. It seems that the lionising of convicted murderers pays dividends in Pakistan.

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Categories: Allama Khadim Hussain Rizvi, Asad Shah, Glasgow, Mumtaz Qadri, News, Opinions, Pakistan, Salman Taseer, Tanveer Ahmed, Tehrik-e-Labaik

“Jihadi Gran” gets 10 years after joining son in Syria

October 8, 2017 Article

 A court on Friday sentenced a radicalised French woman to 10 years in prison after travelling to Syria where her son was fighting alongside Islamic State militants.

Christine Riviere, 51, dubbed by investigators as “Jihadi Gran”, was arrested in 2014 after three trips to Syria, which she said were aimed at spending time with her son in case he was killed.

Announcing the decision, the judge said Riviere had demonstrated “a firm commitment” to Islamic State and had contributed to strengthening the group logistically.

France, like other European nations, is wrestling with how to deal with those returning from the Syrian conflict. A presidency official said last week that half of the 500 children were born there, and in total about 2,000 French nationals or residents had gone to the two countries,

“Instead of trying to disengage your son, it seems on the contrary that you encouraged him,” the judge said.

Investigators believe that Riviere’s son, Tyler Vilus, climbed the Islamic State hierarchy to lead a Francophile group.

Arrested in July 2015 in Turkey and now imprisoned in France, Vilus is suspected of having known members of the network that planned and carried out the November 2015 attacks in Paris in which 130 people were killed.    

The sentencing comes a week after a mother-of-three was found guilty of financing terrorism after she sent money abroad to her radicalised son who later travelled to fight in Syria. She was sentenced to two years in jail.

 

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Categories: Christine Riviere, France, Islamic State, Jihadi Gran, News

Anti-terrorism police hold five over wired explosives found in posh Paris neighbourhood

October 3, 2017 Article

French counter-terrorism investigators questioned five people on Tuesday after police over the weekend found what appeared to be a ready-to-detonate bomb at an apartment building in one of Paris’s poshest neighbourhoods.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said one of those arrested was on an intelligence services list of “radicalised” persons – a list that includes the names of potential Islamist militants.

“We are still in a state of war,” Collomb, speaking after a Sunday attack in which a knifeman killed two women in Marseille, told France Inter radio.

Judicial sources said the explosive device included two gas canisters inside the building in the affluent 16th district of western Paris and two outside, some of them doused with petrol and wired to connect to a mobile phone.

It was unclear why the device was planted at the location where it was found as there was no obvious target living there, the judicial sources said.

More than 230 people have been killed in France in attacks by Islamist militants over the past three years. The Islamic State militant group, whose bases in Syria and Iraq are being bombed by French war planes, has urged followers to attack France.

Most of those killed died in attacks by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers in Paris in 2015 and when a man drove a large truck into crowds in the Riviera resort of Nice in 2016.

Since then, there has been a string of attacks perpetrated by lone assailants, often targeting police or soldiers.

“The threat is changing form,” said Collomb.

A counter-terrorism investigation is also under way after the attack on Sunday, where a knifeman slit the throat of one of his victims and killed her cousin before being shot dead by soldiers at a train station in the southern port city.

A separate inquiry has been opened to establish why the man, who had been briefly detained by police the day before in the city of Lyon had been released.

France declared a state of emergency in late 2015 after the Paris attack by gunmen and suicide bombers, giving police special search and arrest powers to combat would-be terrorists.

New legislation was due to be put to a vote in parliament on Tuesday to make many of those emergency measures permanent.

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Categories: Anti-terror, France, Islamist, Jihadi, Marseille, News, Paris, radicalised

Pakistan ministry seeks ban on new party backed by prominent Islamist

October 1, 2017 Article

Pakistan’s interior ministry has called for the electoral commission to bar from politics a new party backed by an Islamist with a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head, a government document seen by Reuters showed on Thursday.

In a letter dated Sept. 22, the ministry recommended that the Election Commission of Pakistan reject the newly formed Milli Muslim League’s (MML) application to become an official party as it is “affiliated” with Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT), a militant group blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people.

“The registration of MML is not supported,” the ministry said in the two-page document.

Spokesmen for the election commission and the interior ministry acknowledged the correspondence and confirmed that the letter was authentic.

The United States has designated LeT founder Hafiz Saeed, who currently heads the Jamaat-ud-Dawa Islamic charity, a terrorist. It views him as the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks and has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his imprisonment.

Saeed is currently under house arrest. Pakistan’s reluctance to press charges against him has been a sore point in relations with Washington and India over the past decade.

The ministry said MML is “ideologically of the same hue” as LeT and its affiliated charities Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and the Falah-e-Insanyat Foundation (FIF).

Tabish Qayyum, a spokesman for the MML, said in a statement that the ministry’s letter was unlawful.

“MML isn’t a bus or truck which needs registration,” he said, denying that MML had links with any banned militant group.

The ministry’s stance appears at odds with what political sources and a retired army general have said is a plan proposed by the military’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) to ‘mainstream’ some Pakistan-based anti-Indian militant groups as part of deradicalisation efforts by bringing them into politics.

The interior ministry’s letter was written a week after MML caused a stir by winning 5 percent of votes in a parliamentary by-election in Lahore on Sept. 17.

The document said foreign countries have raised diplomatic objections to MML’s existence and the interior ministry has sought the opinions of intelligence agencies on the group.

One of the agencies, the ministry said, has warned against letting proscribed and monitored organizations enter politics with a view to gaining legitimacy.

The interior ministry said the security agency has informed it that “given the clamour, philosophy, outreach and modus operandi to operate, it is difficult to believe that MML will tread its own path completely at variance with its mother organisation.”

“Therefore, they have recommended that since the registration of such groups would breed violence and extremism in politics, as such registration of such groups be avoided.”

In the Lahore by-election, Yaqoob Sheikh, who swears loyalty to Saeed, stood as an independent candidate but was backed by MML and had Saeed’s colleagues running his campaign.

Saeed’s portraits adorned posters promoting Sheikh, who the United States has also designated a terrorist and a senior LeT commander.

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Categories: amaat-ud-Dawa Islamic charity, elections, Hafis Saeed, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT), LeT, Milli Muslim League's (MML), News, Pakistan