PAKISTAN: Pakistan's government has dismissed reports that charities channelled donations for earthquake relief efforts to individuals involved in an alleged plot to bomb transatlantic aircraft.
Since news of the foiled attack broke last week, some reports have claimed investigators in Britain, Pakistan and the US are examining the trail of funds transferred from British donors to Pakistan-based Islamic charities involved in relief efforts following the earthquake last October that killed over 73,000 people in the country.
"These are all absurd, baseless stories. The objective is to malign Pakistan," foreign ministry spokeswoman Tasneem Aslam told reporters yesterday.
A report in the Washington Post claimed an unidentified Pakistani charity received £5 million (€7.4 million) from Britain after the earthquake, some of which was used to finance the alleged plan to blow up as many as 10 US-bound airliners.
Other reports have claimed that Rashid Rauf, one of two British nationals arrested in Pakistan as part of the investigation, and his brother, Tayib, who was among those arrested in Britain, had links to an aid organisation called Crescent Relief.
A New York Times report said investigators were looking at whether the Lahore-based charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa had provided funds raised in British mosques to some of the 23 suspects held in Britain.
It claimed some of the money was to be used to buy airline tickets for the suspects to carry out a practice run, in addition to the attacks themselves.
"We don't have any evidence of Jamaat-ud-Dawa involvement in terrorist activities, nor has the United States shared any evidence with us," Ms Aslam said, adding Rashid Rauf had nothing to do with any charity involved in earthquake relief work.
The US government believes Jamaat-ud-Dawa is little more than a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of the most formidable militias fighting Indian forces in the disputed territory of Kashmir. It also believes Lashkar-e-Taiba is linked to al-Qaeda, claiming Abu Zubayda, the senior al-Qaeda figure captured in Pakistan in 2002, was found in one of the group's safe houses.
Under pressure from America, Pakistani president Gen Pervez Musharraf banned Lashkar-e-Taiba four years ago but has taken no action against Jamaat-ud-Dawa, despite the US government designating it as a terrorist organisation in May.
Both organisations were founded by Hafiz Muhammad Sayeed, a former engineering professor, and the two groups once shared the same headquarters in a town near Lahore.
Jamaat-ud-Dawa took a leading role in relief work following the earthquake that devastated large parts of Kashmir and northwest Pakistan last year. It runs more than 100 schools, hospitals and pharmacies across the country and also provides ambulance and blood transfusion services.
"We are purely a charitable organisation and we condemn all terrorism as un-Islamic," spokesman Abdullah Muntazer told The Irish Times.
"It will never ever be proved that Jamaat-ud-Dawa is involved in any terrorist activity anywhere in the world. We operate openly in Pakistan and have nothing to hide."
He said the charity had no organisational structure or affiliations outside Pakistan and had never raised funds in another country.
Last week, Pakistani authorities placed the charity's founder and former Lashkar-e-Taiba leader, Hafiz Muhammad Sayeed, under house arrest in Lahore, hours before news broke of the arrests in Britain and Pakistan.
Yesterday, the foreign ministry spokeswomen said Sayeed's arrest had nothing to do with the alleged plot, but was due to some statements he had made.
"Hafiz Sayeed has not been connected to any terrorist plot or terrorist incident," she added.
Sayeed has been put under house arrest and been released subsequently several times in the past.