Posted on 12/04/2008 7:29:10 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
At first sight, they could be the grounds of an English public school, with neatly trimmed lawns and earnest young pupils walking between classes. But this is the site that India believes is the headquarters of the terrorist group responsible for last week's Mumbai attacks.
Boarding houses provide spartan accommodation, and orderly rows of trees line the sprawling site, just outside the eastern city of Lahore. Smartly turned-out pupils perform science experiments in the classrooms, peering into microscopes and connecting electric circuits. There is a farm, a swimming pool and a hospital.
India, and some western terrorism experts, believe this is the headquarters of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned Islamist group suspected of carrying out last week's Mumbai attacks. But according to the organisers of a tour of the site yesterday, it is simply the educational and charitable arm of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, an Islamic group that is legal in Pakistan but declared a terrorist organisation by the US.
Following Pakistan's ban on Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2002, it is widely believed to have morphed into Jamaat-ud-Dawa, though the two claim to have no link.
The campus, set in countryside at Muridke, an hour's drive from Lahore, is the place that India would be likely to target if it took retaliatory military action over the Mumbai attacks.
"This is a residential and educational complex," said Abdullah Muntazir, Jamaat-ud-Dawa's spokesman, taking journalists around the Muridke site yesterday in a media charm offensive launched by the group. "You can see for yourself. This is all Indian propaganda."
"Jamaat-ud-Dawa speaks up very loudly against Indian conspiracies; we let the public know that India is the real enemy. That's why they always point at us."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Shocking!
India is the real enemy. That’s why rampaging Hindus are always killing Muslims in Paki.
Most hilarious line in the whole piece:
He said Jamaat-ud-Dawa was a peaceful group, but it had “supported” Lashkar-e-Taiba until that organisation was banned. He said that “morally”, they still backed those who were fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.
CLASSIC Paki ISI doubletalk.
I found their web site here:
Not sure if people will want to visit it or not, but that seems to be it.
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