Pakistan bans Taliban's leading organization

Aug 25, 2008, 10:14 GMT

Islamabad - Pakistan on Monday imposed a ban on the leading organization of the local Taliban after it claimed responsibility for last week's twin suicide attacks at a military-run arms and ammunition factory where more than 80 civilian employees died and around 100 were injured.

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is an umbrella group of several militant organizations. It was created in 2007 and a fearsome militant commander in the country's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, Baitullah Mehsud, was chosen as its first head.

'TTP has been declared as a terrorist organization and the Interior Ministry has issued a notification to ban it,' said Rehman Malik, security adviser to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.

'The law-enforcement agencies have been directed to monitor the activities and movements of those people who are somehow linked with it and take action against them as per the law,' he added.

Malik said the country's central bank, State Bank of Pakistan, has been asked to collect information from various state-owned and commercial banks about the accounts of this organization and freeze them. Other assets of the organization will also be frozen.

TTP head Mehsud is also alleged to have ordered the assassination of ex-premier Benazir Bhutto in a gun-suicide attack late last year in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. Bhutto's party now leads the coalition government.

Three other smaller organizations - Lashkar-i-Islam, Ansarul Islam and Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue - which are not affiliated with TTP but follow one way or the other its philosophy, were also banned. All the three groupings are active in Khyber tribal district.

Some other Taliban groups which are not associated with any of the banned four organizations are deemed as pro-government Taliban, which focus solely on carrying out cross-border attacks on US-led international forces in Afghanistan.