Under pressure, Pak shuts down JuD websites

Under mounting US pressure, the Cyber Crime Wing of the Pakistani Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has finally moved to shut down both the Jamaatul Daawa (JuD) websites www.jamatdawah.org and www.jamaatuddawa.org, which had been spitting venom against India and the US ever since it was banned as a terrorist group by the UN.

According to well-placed FIA sources, the JuD leadership was asked several times since December 10 to shut down its websites. However, instead of complying with the FIA directives, the in-charge of the JuD website, Abdullah Muntazar, had accelerated his anti-US and anti-India propaganda on both the websites, besides severely criticising the Pakistan Peoples Party government for launching a crackdown against the Jamaat.
As the US approached President Asif Zardari recently and apprised him of the objectionable material carried on the websites, the FIA instantly moved to block them. The two websites, besides painting the Mumbai attackers as the heroes of the Muslim Ummah (community or nation), carried audio speeches of the JuD leader Hafiz Mohammad Saeed. On the other hand, the Pakistani authorities have simply failed to shut down Ghazva, the weekly mouth piece of the Jamaatul Daawa.

In a related development, the FIA has informed the ministry of interior that some recent media reports about the JuD preparing to reincarnate under a new name in the wake of the UNSC ban for its involvement in Mumbai terror attacks were not true. The Indian media had reported that the JuD may be planning to rename itself as Tehreek-e-Hurmat-e-Rasool. However, the FIA has informed the ministry of interior that Tehreek-e-Hurmat-e-Rasool is an old organisation which recently took out a rally in Lahore to condemn the Israeli atrocities in the Middle East. Even otherwise, the JuD leadership maintains that they won’t abandon the name of their group.

JuD’s mouthpiece Ghazva, which is printed simultaneously from Lahore and Karachi, had circuitously admitted in its last issue that the JuD and the LeT are one and the same thing and that JuD was openly recruiting Pakistani youths to wage the so-called holy war against India. The latest edition of Ghazva treated the Mumbai terror attacks as its lead story, describing the gory incident as a historic victory for the Muslim ‘warriors’.