Pakistan Shuts Down Attack-Linked Charity

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 11, 2008 -- One day after a U.N. Security Council panel declared Pakistani charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa a front for the group blamed for the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan shuttered the agency's offices, placed its leader under house arrest and promised to cut off its bank accounts, according to Pakistani and Jamaat officials.

"We feel duty bound to the international community," Rehman Malik, the interior ministry chief, told ABC News in an interview. "Because we feel that the criminals should be brought to justice."

Malik said that all offices of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which U.S. officials do not distinguish from the banned militant organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, had been sealed. Malik also promised to shut its bank accounts and prevent members from participating in politics.

Hafiz Saeed, Jamaat-ud-Dawa's leader, was placed under house arrest today, Saeed's spokesman Abdullah Muntazir confirmed to ABC News.

While Pakistan has denied its move against Jamaat-ud-Dawa was a result of pressure, India and the United States have leaned heavily on the Pakistani government to crack down on terrorist groups training within its borders.

One U.S. official described a visit here by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the days after the attack as a message that the Pakistanis had been "caught with their hands in the cookie jar" and needed to make amends.

White House spokesman Scott McCormack today was cautiously optimistic about Pakistan's crackdown on Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

"The Pakistani government has ... acted on what we think are good instincts in terms of going after some of these individuals and extremist groups, and we'll see what the next steps are," McCormack said.

For the first time today, a Pakistani government official seemed to acknowledge that the terrorists who attacked in Mumbai last month, killing more than 170 people, had trained inside Pakistan.

Speaking about India's reaction to the terrorist attacks, Malik said in the interview, "India is rightly crying. They [the terrorists] have used our soil."

Pakistan's moves against Jamaat-ud-Dawa come as Indian officials express exasperation over what they call a lack of official information coming from the Pakistani government.

President Asif Ali Zardari called Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Monday, but Indian diplomats say they have not received official word of Pakistan's moves against Jamaat-ud-Dawa. They admit they're calling reporters on both sides of the border to try and determine what Pakistan is doing.