Pakistani wanted by U.S. offers aid to Sandy victims

PanARMENIAN.Net - As residents of the U.S. Northeast grapple with the destruction wrought by Superstorm Sandy, an offer of assistance has come from an unlikely quarter: the leader of a radical Muslim group in Pakistan who has a $10 million bounty on him from U.S. authorities, CNN reports.

"We offer our unconditional support and help for the victims" of the storm, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, head of the Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, said in a statement. "If U.S. government allows, we will send our doctors, relief and rescue experts, food and medicine on humanitarian grounds."

The proposal may seem a little surprising in light of the U.S authorities' announcement in April that they would pay $10 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Saeed, who is accused by India of masterminding the 2008 terrorist assault on Mumbai that killed 166 people -- an allegation he denies.

Saeed said in the statement posted on Jamaat-ud-Dawa's Facebook page that despite the bounty and U.S. allegations about his organization, helping Americans struck by adversity is "our religious and moral obligation."

"Islam orders us to help them without discriminating between religion, cast or creed," he said in the statement, which was set against the backdrop of an apparently fabricated image of a scuba diver swimming through a submerged Times Square subway station.

His organization said on its Twitter account that it had previously carried out relief efforts following natural disasters in Sri Lanka and Indonesia.