The United States has posted a $10 million reward for help in the arrest of the founder of the Pakistan-based militant group, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, suspected of masterminding attacks on India's financial capital and its parliament. The reward comes at a time of heightened tension between the United States and Pakistan and is likely to increases pressure on Pakistan to take action against Saeed, who has recently addressed rallies in Pakistan despite an Interpol warrant for him. Released from house arrest in 2009, Saeed is a free man in Pakistan. India has long called for Saeed's capture and said the bounty – one of the highest on offer – was a sign the United States understood its security concerns. Saeed heads the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) charity, described by the United Nations as a front for the LeT, which is banned in Pakistan. He denies any connection to the LeT. Last week he addressed thousands of people at a rally in Islamabad urging Pakistan not to reopen its Afghan border to NATO and US supply convoys. “India welcomes this new initiative of the government of the United States,” Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said on Tuesday of the bounty announced on the US Rewards for Justice website. “In recent years, India and the United States have moved much closer than ever before in our common endeavor of fighting terrorists.” The United States only offers a $10 million reward for three other people it suspects of terrorism, with a single reward of up to $25 million for Egyptian-born Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri. There was previously no US bounty for Saeed. In the 1990s, Saeed founded Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), one of the largest and best-funded militant organizations in South Asia. He abandoned its leadership after India accused it and another militant group of being behind an attack on the Indian parliament in Dec. 2001. Saeed's freedom of movement in Pakistan has angered India, which says it has given its neighbor a dossier of evidence to arrest the bespectacled firebrand. “There is enough material to detain him and we feel the Pakistan government is not doing its duty,” Home Minister P. Chidambaram said. Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari is due to visit India on Sunday and is expected to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Yahya Mujahid, the JuD's spokesman, said the reward was a reaction to his group's campaign against attacks in Pakistan by US drone aircraft and its opposition to supplies being transported through Pakistan to NATO forces in Afghanistan. “This inappropriate American behavior will not cause any problems for Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, but it will definitely intensify anti-American sentiments in the hearts of millions of Muslims,” Mujahid said in a statement.
