ISLAMABAD - LASHKAR-E-TAIBA, the radical Islamic group suspected of training the Mumbai attackers, was established to fight Indian rule in Kashmir and has past links to both Pakistani intelligence and Al-Qaeda.
The group, whose name means 'Army of the Pious' is on the US watch-list of terrorist organisations and is banned in the United Kingdom and several other Western countries.
Founded by fiery Islamist Hafiz Mohammad Saeed in 1989 as the military wing of the Islamic centre Markaz Dawa-wal Irshad, it is headquartered in Muridke near the eastern city of Lahore.
Saeed is known to have received substantial funds from Saudi donors and Pakistani intelligence to launch the group, which subsequently acquired a large tract of land in Muridke to organise militant cells and training.
He is among terror suspects that India on Tuesday demanded Pakistan hand over, following the Mumbai attacks that killed 188 people.
A Lashkar-e-Taiba spokesman based in the Indian Kashmir summer capital of Srinagar denied the group had any involvement in the Mumbai atrocities, but it has been named in several high profile attacks in India.
When Lashkar-e-Taiba was blamed for the December 2001 attacks on the Indian parliament which killed ten people, it brought India and Pakistan to the edge of war.
Conflict between the two nuclear powers was only avoided after intensive US-led international diplomacy.
The group denied any involvement in the parliament attack, but Pakistani authorities officially outlawed it in January 2002. Its name resurfaced later that year when Pakistan captured a close lieutenant of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian-Jordanian, was arrested in the Punjab city of Faisalabad and officials said at the time members of Lashkar-e-Taiba were sheltering the fugitive.
It was again in the spotlight after the July 7, 2005 London bombings which killed 53 people. Two of the four suicide bombers, Britons of Pakistani origin, were thought to have met Al-Qaeda leaders at a facility run by Lashkar-e-Taiba.
The 62-year-old founder Saeed, who fought briefly in Afghanistan in the 1980s, left the group shortly before its 2002 ban and set up the Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, regarded as its political wing.
Saeed's spokesman Yahya Mujahid told AFP that the charity has no relation with his old militant organisation.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is now run by Qari Abdul Wahid Kashmiri, who was once a member of Saeed's religious party.
Almost all extremist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan that target India trace their roots to the Cold War.
Backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan under Islamist dictator Zia-ul-Haq trained tens of thousands of young men in religious schools to fight in Afghanistan during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation.
After the Red Army retreated, they went their separate ways. Pakistan sent many into India's portion of the divided Himalayan state of Kashmir, according to security officials, while others drifted into sectarian violence.
The Indian military offensive at the border and the September 11 terror attacks on the United States forced the Pakistani establishment to reign in these groups and stop armed infiltration into the Indian side of Kashmir.
Security sources say the Pakistani intelligence patronage of Lashkar-e-Taiba faded after a pair of suicide attacks attempted to assassinate then-president General Pervez Musharraf in 2004, and was brought to a virtual halt after the July 7 London bombing.
Saeed was placed under house arrest twice for a year under Musharraf and the facility at Muridke was turned into a teaching institution, although Saeed continues to preach Jihad from the platform of Dawa.
Currently the group maintains a low profile in Pakistan and focuses its activities mainly in Indian Kashmir under the command of Wahid.
Pakistani security officials insist the tentacles of the group remain under a strict watch of the intelligence agencies to prevent any sabotage of the peace process with India. -- AFP