US ban on Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a boost for Indian intelligence

New Delhi: The move to include the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and two key operatives of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba in the list of designated global terrorists by the United States treasury department has come as a shot in the arm for Indian intelligence which for long have been insisting that the US agencies should include the JuD and its operatives in the list of banned outfits as they have been sponsoring major terror operations against India.

The IB and the home ministry’s Internal Security Division have in the past prevailed upon their US counterparts that the JuD was nothing more than a front of the Lashkar helping it raise funds through operatives in the US.

Eventually, intelligence sources said, the US treasury department has acknowledged this fact and admitted that JuD operatives had indeed been raising funds in the garb of relief activities. This is why Jamaat’s finance chief Muhammed Hussein Gill has also been named a specially-designated global terrorist along with Nazir Ahmed. Hussein and Nazir are said to be “close aides” of JuD chief Hafiz Saeed.

Saeed is the alleged mastermind of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks and is also said to be the brain behind the Border Action Teams that severed the heads of Indian soldiers along the LoC.

What this ban means is that the US authorities can freeze and crack down on any fund-raising activities of the JuD and the two LeT operatives. Sources said that Hussein has a vast network of sympathisers in the US and Europe from whom he had been collecting substantial funds in the name of charity work in Pakistan. But these funds were in fact used to train and arm the Lashkar cadre in PoK.