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Al-Qaeda clone takes root in the US

In a conversation with the editorial staff of the Washington Post on June 26, President General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan was reported to have claimed that he had effectively put an end to the terrorist activities of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), both members of Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front (IIF), in Pakistan. He was quoted as having told the newspaper’s staff as follows, “The Lashkar-e-Toiba has been banned. The Jaish-e-Mohammad has been banned. There are hundreds of offices out there and I mean hundreds and hundreds of offices around the country, including Kashmir, have been sealed and closed. Their accounts have been frozen. Nobody before this could have touched them. They couldn’t even have touched any one of these organizations or their leaders.” The next day, as if to prove him wrong, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) charged seven men in the Washington area and an eighth in Philadelphia with stockpiling weapons and conspiring to wage jihad against India in support of a terrorist group in Kashmir. The FBI’s charge sheet against them described them as members of the LET. It also said that three others involved in the case were absconding and were believed to be in Saudi Arabia. Full Story