ISLAMABAD —Pakistan was stung Tuesday by the U.S. State Department’s announcement of a $10 million reward for the capture or conviction of the founder of a Pakistani militant group that allegedly carried out the November 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai, India’s largest city.
The size of the bounty for Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba organization, is on par with what the U.S. is offering for Mullah Mohammad Omar, the leader of Afghanistan’s Taliban. U.S. officials also announced a $2 million reward for information leading to the location of Hafiz Abdul Rahman Makki, Saeed’s deputy and brother-in-law.
Pakistani officials didn’t learn of the U.S. decision until newspaper websites in India, Pakistan’s archenemy, reported it early Tuesday. That prompted analysts in Islamabad to conclude it was a pressure tactic by Washington aimed at forcing Pakistan to reopen NATO supply routes to Afghanistan that were suspended last fall after a friendly-fire incident in which U.S. forces killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers.
“The U.S. has upped the ante. It’s as if they’re saying: ‘You blocked the NATO supplies, so we’ve done this,’ ” said Imtiaz Gul, director of the Center for Research and Security Studies, an independent research center in Pakistan. “It’s a very strong message.”
Pakistan has previously said it can’t act against Saeed because the country’s judiciary has cleared him of involvement in the Mumbai attacks. In recent months he’s often appeared in public, denouncing the U.S. and calling for Islamabad to end counterterrorism cooperation with Washington.
In Washington, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the decision to name Saeed had been in the works for months and wasn’t related to NATO supplies but rather was because he’d helped plan the four-day assault on Mumbai, in which 166 people were killed, including six American citizens.
