Raising the stakes

Hafiz Mohammed Saeed is a "powerful" man in Pakistan. He could, for instance, openly conduct fune-ral prayers for Osama bin Laden last year when all of Pakistan, including its alphabet soup of jihadists, was stunned into silence after the May 2 killing of the al-Qaida supremo in Abbottabad. Saeed recently told journalists that he and Osama bin Laden were buddies in Saudi Arabia, studying together under the same Salafi guru, Sheikh bin Baz. Bin Laden supplied the seed money for Saeed's headquarters in Muridke - a tidy sum of Rs 1 crore via his close associate, Abu Andar Rehman Sareshi.

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