ISLAMABAD - THE Pakistani government appealed a court decision that freed a founder of the group India blames for last year's Mumbai terrorist attacks, saying Monday it believed the man was still a security threat.

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed was released in early June after the high court in the eastern city of Lahore ruled there was not enough evidence to keep the Muslim cleric under house arrest.

Deputy Attorney General Shah Khawar said the government filed an appeal on Monday with the Supreme Court.

'Our law enforcement and intelligence agencies have enough evidence that Hafiz Saeed at liberty is a security threat,' Khwar told The Associated Press.

Saeed's lawyer, A.K. Dogar, said he would fight the appeal.

Saeed was detained in December during a countrywide crackdown on alleged militants.

The action was taken in line with a United Nations resolution that declared Jamaat-ud-Dawa - a group Saeed says is a charity - was a front for the banned terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

India accuses Lashkar, which Saeed also helped establish in the late 1980s, of sending the teams of gunmen that rampaged through Mumbai last November in an attack on luxury hotels, a busy train station and other sites. The three-day siege left 166 people dead.

Under pressure from Washington, Pakistan banned Lashkar in 2002 during a crackdown on militants following the Sept 11, 2001 attacks.

In June, an Indian court issued arrest warrants for 22 Pakistani nationals, including Saeed, accused of masterminding the Mumbai attacks. The warrants were issued in response to a prosecutors' motion in the trial of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, alleged to be the only surviving gunman in the attacks. -- AP