As the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) grew in Pakistan, Saeed's family rotated to the US to live and work here for a decade.
During this time, LeT aka Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), has morphed from an ISI-sponsored terror outfit against India to become a global jihadist organisation with increasing ties to Al Qaeda.
JuD originated and deeply resonated in almost all areas of Pakistani life where the U.S. could do little. Mumbai changed the equation.
Previously, Saeed's family rotation lived here as imams while preaching and raising funds for jihad.
The first to land in the US was Muhammad Masood, Saeed's brother, who arrived in 1987 on a J-1 exchange visitor visa. He lived in the Boston area, working odd jobs until he started teaching at the Islamic Academy of New England at the Islamic Center of New England in Sharon, Massachusetts. Masood was arrested in November 2006 and charged with visa fraud and other unnamed crimes.
The second family member to arrive was Abdul Hannan, Saeed's brother-in-law (married to Masood's sister). Hannan arrived in the late-1990s, coming to the US through another member of their organisation, Muhammad Khalil, who is serving time currently in a U.S. jail. By 1998, Hannan himself was in jail, also in Massachusetts.
Hannan was released in 2002, and for the next couple of years floated around another Rhode Island, also as an imam, before returning, as imam to Massachusetts. Hannan was again arrested in November 2006 with his brother-in-law Masood. So far, there were two members of Saeed's family in U.S. jails.
The third member, another brother of Saeed named Hamid arrived in the US in 2001 for a program at Harvard University. He returned to the U.S. later in the year and became an imam at the Islamic Society of Greater Worcester. In October 2007, Hamid was deported to Pakistan, on visa irregularities. But one of the reasons, according to some sources, was that the U.S. discovered that he used to run a safe house for LeT terrorists in Moon Chowk and Lahore, India and that his imam activities in the U.S. were all about teaching jihad to youngsters there.
By 2003, LeT offices opened in California and Virginia. After the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, international organizations discovered that LeT also ran terror training camps which were also used to train terrorists from other groups.
The climax to their activities was Mumbai on November 26.
LeT arose an international terrorist organization allied with, or working in concert with Al Qaeda thus this has piqued the interest of the international intelligence community.
Daniel Markey, currently with the Council for Foreign Relations and earlier with the U.S. State Department, stated that the U.S. concern is that LeT emerged as a global jihadist organization no longer satisfied with the status as just an anti-India group.
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