'55 Jamaat leaders under detention'

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday said it has detained 55 leaders of the outlawed Jamaat-ud-Dawa as part of the crackdown against the group designated as a terrorist outfit by UN Security Council, but claimed that no evidence linking them to the Mumbai attacks has been found so far.

The crackdown on JuD, the front organisation of Lashkar-e-Taiba blamed for the Mumbai attacks, is continuing and 55 of its leaders, including its chief Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, have been detained. Twenty-two JuD leaders have also been barred from travelling abroad, an interior ministry spokesman said.

The detained leaders were being interrogated and no clues about links to the Mumbai terror attacks have been found so far, the spokesman said.

The Indian government has not provided any "credible evidence" against the JuD, he said. Authorities also had no information on the whereabouts of Jaish-e-Muhammad chief Masood Azhar, the spokesman claimed.

Defence minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar has said the detained JuD leaders, including Saeed, could not be tried in Pakistani courts in the absence of evidence against them. He said the leaders had been detained under the Maintenance of Public Order ordinance, which allows a person to be held for up to 90 days.

India has blamed the LeT for the attacks in its financial hub. India also holds the LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad responsible for an attack on its parliament in 2001.

Foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told a TV channel on Wednesday that Masood Azhar was in custody but retracted his statement less than two hours later. The Foreign office later clarified that Qureshi had said that Azhar "is wanted by the law enforcement authorities of Pakistan and is at large".