ISLAMABAD, 30 August 2006 — Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, former chief of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba group, was rearrested yesterday an hour after he was released following a court ruling that his detention was illegal.
“It is a mockery of the law. It is an insult to the court. They wanted to show the court that the executive is more powerful than the judiciary,” Saeed’s lawyer, Nazir Ahmed Ghazi, told reporters.
Saeed, the founder and former leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, was first placed under house arrest on Aug. 10.
But the High Court in Lahore ordered his release on Monday, saying the government had not provided sufficient evidence to justify his detention.
Released on Monday evening, Saeed was detained again an hour later, said his lawyer. Authorities said at the time of his original detention that they feared his activities could affect law and order but had nothing to do with an investigation into a plot foiled in London to blow up airliners over the Atlantic.
Ghazi said Saeed had been taken to jail and would be held for two months, adding he said he would challenge the detention.
Saeed resigned almost five years ago from Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group active in fighting Indian security forces in India’s part of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
The group has also been accused or suspected of involvement in numerous attacks in Indian cities.
Saeed then become head of a charity called Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which is regarded as a sister organization of the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
A spokesman for the charity said Saeed had been held under a public order law.
“We were told that Hafiz was detained under the Maintenance of Public Order,” said the spokesman, Yahya Mujahid.
Under the law, a person can be held for 90 days. The United States has designated both Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa as terrorist organizations.
