The U.S. government has offered a reward of up to $10 million for information related to the leader of an outlawed Pakistan-based terrorist group. The bounty was announced Tuesday on the State Department's "Rewards for Justice" website.
Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Tayibba (LeT), is alleged to be the mastermind of the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks that killed 166 people, including six Americans. Following the attacks, Saeed was designated a Specially Designated National by the U.S. Treasury.
Testimony presented at the trial last May of a Chicago businessman charged with aiding the Mumbai attacks, indicated that armed militants from the LeT carried out the attacks in collusion with Pakistan's powerful Inter Services Intelligence agency.
Saeed heads the Pakistan-based Islamist charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), which is widely suspected to be a front for the LeT. He is known to have made public statements against the United States, Israel, and India. At a June 2010 anti-Israel rally in Lahore, Pakistan, Saeed predicted the destruction of Israel at the hands of Muslims: "If Israel offers resistance, the armies of the world of Islam will come into action; and Israel will be wiped off the earth."
In 2001, LeT was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization. In 2008, both the U.S. and the United Nations declared the JuD a terrorist organization.