Mumbai 'mastermind denies link to terror group: report

The man suspected by the United States and India of organising the killing of 165 people in Mumbai has condemned the attack and denied any involvement with the group blamed for organising it. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed described the accusations against him as Indian propaganda and said he was running a charity that had helped to rescue victims of the Kashmir earthquake. The United Nations placed Saeed on its list of wanted terrorists a month after the attacks of November 2008, as the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba the Army of the the Righteous. America and India blame the group for the Mumbai massacre, three assaults on Delhi, the deaths of 211 civilians in a train bombing in Mumbai in 2005 and last months suicide attacks on Kabul. Saeed told The Independent newspaper: This is one of the biggest falsehoods, that I was said to be the founder. . . The Lahore High Court investigated this accusation and they found it was not true. He had been to Afghanistan as an observer rather than a combatant and called for the withdrawl of Nato troops, he said. He had also met Osama Bin Laden in the 1980s, on the pilgrimage to Mecca. We greeted each other, it was very simple, it was very brief. There was not much talk, he said. They make me out to be the biggest and most evil terrorist, he said, speaking from Lahore, where he is guarded by two Pakistani policemen. Do I look like one? (The Times)

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