Hafiz Saeed

As told by him, his father, Maulana Kamal-ud-Din, a religious scholar, landlord and farmer, along with his family started migrating from Ambala, East Punjab (now in Haryana) and reached Pakistan in around four months in the autumn of 1947.

The family is of Gujjar background and three of his brothers, Hafiz Hamid, Hafiz Mastodon and Hafiz Hannan, are involved in Islamic activism as well, having previously run Islamic centres in Boston in the United States.

He was named hafiz because he memorized the Qur'an during his childhood, a time during which he was already enthusiastic about the verses on jihad.

He then attended the Government College Sargodha (now University of Sargodha) before getting a Master's in Islamic Studies at the King Saud University in Riyadh.

A major early influence on his life and ideology was his maternal uncle, and later father-in-law, Hafiz Abdullah Bahawalpuri, who was a famed theologian belonging to the Ahl-i Hadith, who held that democracy was incompatible with Islam (which alienated him with Maulana Maududi's Jamaat-e-Islami) and argued, on the importance of jihad, "that only in jihad does one offer one's life in the way of Allah, which elevates it to a higher plane than merely fulfilling other religious responsibilities such as saying prayers and paying zakat, also entailing sacrifices and adjustments, but not at the scale evident in jihad" and "considered shahadat (martyrdom) to be the crux of jihad."

Bahawalpuri's only son, Abdul Rehman Makki, is Saeed's brother-in-law and has been described as "his close partner."

General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq appointed Saeed to the Council on Islamic Ideology, and he later served as an Islamic Studies teacher at the University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan.

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed (, born 5 June 1950) is a Pakistani Islamist who co-founded Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based Islamist militant organization that is designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council, India, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia, and Russia.

He is listed on India's NIA Most Wanted.

He was sent to Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s by the university for higher studies where he met Saudi sheikhs who were taking part in the Soviet–Afghan War.

They inspired him in taking an active role supporting the mujahideen in Afghanistan.

During his studies at the King Saud University, where he was gold medalist for his academic performances as well as taught there, he came under the influence of Salafi scholars like Shaykh Muhammad ibn al Uthaymeen and especially Shaykh Ibn Baz.

Saeed held two master's degrees from the University of Punjab and a specialisation in Islamic Studies and Arabic Language from King Saud University.

In 1987, Saeed, along with Abdullah Azzam, Prof.Zafar Iqbal Sardar founded Markaz Dawa-Wal-Irshad, a group with roots in the Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadis.

This organisation spawned the jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba in 1987, with the help of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence officers.

Lashkar's primary target is the Indian-administered territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

Saeed's son Talha Saeed serves as the Lashkar-e-Taiba second-in-command.

He controls the finances of Lashkar.

In 1994, Saeed visited the United States and "spoke at Islamic centres in Houston, Chicago and Boston".

Pakistan took Saeed into custody on 21 December 2001 due to an Indian government assertion that he was involved in the 13 December 2001 attack on the Lok Sabha.

He was held until 31 March 2002, released, then taken back into custody on 15 May.

He was placed under house arrest on 31 October 2002 after his wife Maimoona Saeed sued the province of Punjab and the Pakistan federal government for what she claimed was an illegal detention.

After 11 July 2006 Mumbai train bombings, the provincial government of Punjab, Pakistan arrested him on 9 August 2006 and kept him under house arrest but he was released on 28 August 2006 after a Lahore High Court order.

He was arrested again on the same day by the provincial government and was kept in the Canal Rest House in Sheikhupura.

He was finally released after the Lahore High Court order on 17 October 2006.

After the 2008 Mumbai attacks, he was designated by the Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee of the Security Council.

He is also listed on the United States Department of the Treasury's Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.

India has demanded that Saeed be handed over into Indian custody by Pakistan; however, there is no extradition agreement between the two countries.

Saeed has denied ever being a leader of LeT and has said all allegations that he planned attacks in India are baseless.

After the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, India submitted a formal request to the U.N. Security Council to put the group Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Saeed on the list of individuals and organisations sanctioned by the United Nations for association with terrorism.

India has accused the organisation and its leader, Saeed, of being virtually interchangeable with Lashkar-e-Taiba.

India said that the close links between the organisations, as well as the 2,500 offices and 11 seminaries that Jamaat-ud-Dawa maintains in Pakistan, "are of immediate concern with regard to their efforts to mobilise and orchestrate terrorist activities."

On 10 December 2008, Saeed denied a link between LeT and JuD in an interview with Pakistan's Geo television stating that "no Lashkar-e-Taiba man is in Jamaat-ud-Dawa and I have never been a chief of Lashkar-e-Taiba."

In April 2012, the United States placed a bounty of US$10 million on Saeed for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 civilians.

While India officially supported the American move, there were protests against it in Pakistan.

In July 2019, three months before the scheduled reviewal of Pakistan's action plan by the Financial Action Task Force, Saeed was arrested by Pakistani authorities and sentenced to an 11-year prison sentence.

In early April 2022, he was sentenced an additional 31 years for terror financing.

Saeed was born in Sargodha, Punjab, Pakistan.

In 2019, Talha escaped an assassination attempt when a bomb inside a refrigerator shop exploded in Lahore.

According to Lashkar the bombing was attributed to the infighting in the Lashkar and R&AW.