LAHORE: Apprehending an Indian attack on the Muridke headquarters of Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, his close aides on Thursday reportedly opened the sprawling 200-acre building to foreign journalists to prove it was not a terrorist training facility and housed only educational institutions.
Speaking to DNA, Yahya Mujahid, a close aide of Hafiz Saeed and spokesperson for Jamaatul Daawa, which is believed to be a front for the LeT, denied reports in the Indian media that the sole Mumbai attacker captured alive had been indoctrinated and trained at the Murdike site which is called the Markaz-e-Taiba or the Centre of the Pure.
“This is propaganda,” Mujahid said in a phone interview to a news agency. Mujahid was spokesman for LeT until it was banned in January 2002 by former president Pervez Musharraf.
Jamaatul Dawa is a welfare organisation involved in relief work, Mujahid said. Lashkar-e-Taiba does not exist in Pakistan since it was banned and is based in Srinagar, he said.
Lashkar was renamed Jamaatul Dawa in 2002 and has worked in Pakistan since then from its headquarters in Muridke, near Lahore.
Mujahid said the foreign journalists were given free access to various parts of the building and taken around the schools and colleges on the premises. The Markaz-e-Taiba compound also houses farms, mosques, fish-breeding ponds and stables.
Heavily armed men guard the entrance to the Markaz, which is fenced off by barbed wire and protected from view by tall trees.
The foreign media was told that over 5,000 students are enrolled at the various institutes on the campus.
The LeT has been held responsible for the suicide attack on Red Fort in New Delhi, and the recent terror attacks in Mumbai have again put the spotlight on the outfit.
The Lashkar is an Ahle Hadith (Wahabi) jehadi group which was born as the military wing of Markaz Dawatul Irshad (MDI) or Centre for Proselytisation and Preaching.
The MDI was set up in 1988 by three Islamic scholars - Prof Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and Prof Zafar Iqbal— who were teachers of Islamic studies at the University of Engineering Technology, Lahore, and Dr Abdullah Azzam, a professor at the International Islamic University, Islamabad.
