UN sanctions leaders of group suspected in Mumbai attacks

AUN Security Council committee on Wednesday added the names of four members of a Pakistani militant group alleged to belinked to the Mumbai attacks to a list of people and firms facing sanctions for ties to al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

The four menare members of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba group, which India has blamed for the November attacks that killed 171 people and wounded 239. Among the dead were two Canadians.

The UN Security Council committee has also declared the Pakistan-based charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa a front group for Lashkar-e-Taiba, which means the charity will be subject to UN sanctions.

The four men singled out by the committee are Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Lashkar's operations chief; Muhammad Saeed, the group's leader; Haji Muhammad Ashraf, its chief of finance; and Mahmoud Mohammad Ahmed Bahaziq, a financier with the group.

Their inclusion on the Security Council's al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctions committee list makes them subject to an assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo.

On Wednesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani confirmed thatLakhvi and Zara Shah, another mansuspected of being connected to the Mumbai attacks,have been arrested and are being held for questioning.

"They have been detained for investigation," he said.

Officials have said Lakhvi, who India alleges recruited other men for the deadly mission, was arrested on Sunday in a raid on a militant camp.

U.S. officials said Lakhvi has also directed Laskhar-e-Taiba operations in Chechnya, Bosnia and Southeast Asia, where he allegedly trained members to carry out suicide bombings.

Shah has also been identified by authorities as a suspect in the assaults, but the prime minister declined to provide details of his arrest.

Intelligent officials, cited in Indian media, have said Shah is Lashkar's communications chief and created a system that allowed the group's leaders to stay in touch with the gunmen during the siege.

In addition to the camp raid, five offices of Lashkar-e-Taiba were raided by Pakistani troops in Pakistan's portion of the disputed region of Kashmir this week, officials said.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said there is "no doubt" the attacks were planned on Pakistani soil.

The attacks have increased tensions between the two nuclear rivals as India has demanded that Pakistan take action against the militants.

Pakistan has indicated anyone connected with the Mumbai attacks who is found on its soil will be punished according to its laws despite suggestions from India that it wants suspects in the attacks transferred to its custody.

Gilani said India had shared no evidence or information with Pakistan about their suspicions surrounding the men in custody.

"We are investigating on our own about the people they have identified [through the media]," he said. "That is a good message to our neighbors and rest of the world that Pakistan is a responsible nation."