Hafiz Saeed's LeT behind Ramzan terror attacks in Saudi Arabia: report
Brussels: The European Parliament's Vice-President Ryszard Czarneck, in a scathing editorial titled 'Wake up call to anti-terrorism Ayatollahs', has said that the recent Ramzan terror attacks in Saudi Arabia have signalled the arrival of the Lashkar-e-Taiba's "humanitarian" NGO Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) as being the source for terror attack on Medina.
Czarneck mentions in his article that ever since the ISIS's exponential proliferation in the Middle East, the activities of Pakistani-linked Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its sister concern Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) have also picked up. Earlier, Lashkar and Falah-e-Insaniyat's activities were dismissed as being primarily focused on India. However, the recent terror attacks in Medina have changed that opinion.
Read: Pakistani man behind suicide bombing in Medina: Saudi Arabia
"The arrest of 12 Pakistanis for the suicide attacks in Medina, the western city of Jeddah, and the eastern city of Qatif, has made even the Saudis sit up and take note. One of the arrested ring leaders is Abdullah Qalzar Khan (34), a driver by profession and a resident of Jeddah for over a decade. His arrest shows FIF's quiet ways of radicalisation of the Pakistani diaspora, to pump prime the LeT's campaign for a new Islamist world order based on Sharia - religious and temporal practices that date back to the days of Prophet Muhammad," writes Czarneck.
The FIF is a 'charitable' organization started by Hafiz Saeed, the perpetrator of the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008. Czarneck writes that the FIF in its operations doubles up as a recruitment agency for affected, radicalized youth. Whilst distributing blankets in Syria, distributing knick-knacks during prayer time in Gaza or distributing relief material during the Nepal earthquake, organizations like LeT soon follow their FIF comrades into an indoctrination/recruitment campaign.
An example of FIF founder Hafiz Saeed's indoctrination tool can be seen in the recruitment of Ghulam Mustafa Rama, the man behind the 2001 shoe bomber, Richard C Reid. From a butcher shop in Northern Paris, Rama graduated to becoming the French face of the Hafiz Saeed-floated religious organization Markaz Dawa ul-Irshad. He remained in touch with his Pakistani handlers via a call center operated by his countryman and eventually provided logistical support to the 'shoe bomber' Richard Reid in December 2001.
Read: India, US planning 'big war' against Pakistan: Hafiz Saeed
Hafiz Saeed has tapped the Pakistani diaspora abroad to recruit terrorists in the past; in 2003 Faheed Khalid Lodhi was planning a series of bomb blasts to attack the National Electricity Grid in Australia among other Australian Defense installations. Lodhi's arrest led to a direct link with LeT.
The FIF/JuD supremo's recruitment prowess hasn't waned as the years have passed. According to the Sunday Times, three months ago, Hafiz Saeed tapped into one of the accused in the Mumbai 2008 attacks, Muhammad Ghani Usma, a veteran bomb-maker for LeT and sent Usman via the refugee route into Europe. Luckily, Usman was nabbed at a Austrian refugee center before he could carry out the task he was assigned.
"From Paris to Salzburg, from Sydney to Kathmandu, and from Italy to Belgium, it has been a long footprint for the Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation, and its master Hafeez Saeed and the LeT. Yet, the Western anti-terrorism Ayatollahs have not given its apparatchiks a run for their money - a sad commentary by itself on the way the world looks at the 21st century phenomenon of terrorism, that has no parallels when viewed through the tinted glasses of a bygone era," writes European Parliament Vice-President Ryszard Czarnecki.
LeT and other Pakistani terror organizations that are spawned by ideologues who believe in a militant Sharia world order are working overtime in recruitment and are a threat that needs to be tackled head on, wrote the European Parliament Vice-President.
