Militant-linked charity fears Indian reprisal

By Kamran Haider

MURIDKE, Pakistan (Reuters) - Fear of an Indian missile strike haunts the Pakistani Islamist charity that India and the United States say is a front for the militant group suspected of slaughtering 183 people in Mumbai.

"Will India attack our center?" said Abu Hassaan, chief administrator at Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity's headquarters, known as the Markaz-e-Taiba.

"Are they serious?" he asked, anxiously, before denying that terrorism was either taught or preached at the complex.

The head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa is Hafiz Saeed, one of the most wanted men in India.

Saeed is the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group that India -- which says it is not planning any military response to the Mumbai attacks -- has made its prime suspect.

Saeed quit Lashkar days before it was banned in Pakistan, after being blamed for the December, 2001 attack on the Indian parliament which almost started a fourth war between the nuclear armed neighbors.

His aides deny that their leader has any links to militants and termed Indian demands for his extradition as "ridiculous."

"Hafiz Saeed has never been convicted of any crime anywhere the world over," JuD spokesman Yahya Mujahid said.

Maybe not, but the United States froze his assets this year, having added Jamaat-ud-Dawa in 2006 and Lashkar in 2001, to its list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Pakistan has put Jamaat-ud-Dawa on a watch-list, but it hasn't been driven underground, and Saeed often addresses crowds of thousands of people at gatherings in Lahore.

The charity's activists, many of them carrying weapons, were at the forefront of relief efforts following the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, and after a smaller tremor in the western province of Baluchistan last month.

Pakistan briefly put Saeed under house arrest after bomb blasts on Mumbai's commuter trains killed close to 200 people in July, 2006, as it feared a peace process begun in 2004 with India could be derailed.

TEACHINGS OF WAHABISM

Saudi funding helped Saeed open the complex in 1988 in the town of Muridke, 30 km north of Lahore and about an hour's drive from the Indian border, to spread the teachings of the Wahabi sect.

Heavily armed guards patrol the barbed wire perimeter of the sprawling complex housing two schools, an Islamic university and a mosque, as well as paddy fields, fish farms and stables for livestock.