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FACTBOX - Who are the Lashkar-e-Taiba?

Mon Dec 1, 2008 8:47pm IST
 
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Reuters - Investigators said on Monday the militants who attacked Mumbai underwent months of commando training in Pakistan, raising tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours as recriminations mounted in India.

The Pakistan based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, has denied being behind the Mumbai attacks and said it condemned them. However a police officer close to the interrogation told Reuters that the training was organised by Lashkar, and conducted by a former member of the Pakistani army.

Here are some details about the group:

* WHO ARE THE LASHKAR-E-TAIBA?

-- Lashkar-e-Taiba - "The army of the pure" - was a militant offshoot of Markaz Dawatul Irshad, an Islamic charity and educational organisation. Markaz Dawatul Irshad has since been renamed as Jamaat-ud-Dawa that was at the forefront of relief work after the 2005 earthquake killed 73,000 people in Pakistani Kashmir and the North West Frontier Province.

-- The Pakistan-based Lashkar made its name fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.

-- It was founded in 1989 by Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and Zafar Iqbal. Saeed was a former teacher of Islamic studies at Lahore's University of Engineering and Technology.

-- Lashkar based its philosophy on Wahhabism, the austere brand of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia, and has relied on donations from overseas.

-- The group's objective is to Islamicise South Asia with its main aim being to free Muslims in India administered Kashmir.   Continued...

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