Pakistani organization accused of links to Mumbai attacks holds open house

With India accusing Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) of last week's deadly attacks on Mumbai, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), an organization that the US and India say is a front for the LeT, invited the press to its facilities in Pakistan Thursday in an effort to show that it is only an Islamic charity.

The Times (of London), one of the news organizations invited to Markaz-e-Taiba, the JuD's main facility outside Lahore, Pakistan, writes that "Indian accounts [suggest] Markaz-e-Taiba is the dragon's lair," but "the reality... appeared rather more civilised."

A lunch of spiced chicken, rice and bread was laid out across ten round tables in an immaculate rose garden inside the complex, 30 miles from the Pakistani city of Lahore.

Polite young men with long beards handed around bottles of mineral water as a spokesman held forth in impeccable English. The gunmen who normally patrol the 75-acre grounds were nowhere to be seen. "Welcome," said a smiling guard as he frisked a visitor at the gate.

This was the friendly face of the Islamist movement now at the centre of the investigation into the Mumbai attacks — and a tense diplomatic stand-off between India and Pakistan......