Terrorist Organization Profile:
Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM)

While a member of HuA, Maulana Masood Azhar was captured during a 1994 mission in Jammu and Kashmir. He remained in prison for several years, but his release was secured in exchange for 155 hostages on an Indian Airlines plane hijacked in December 1999. During his imprisonment, the HuA had been included in the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, leading the outfit to rename itself as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM). However, when Masood Azhar was freed, he decided to float a new outfit, JeM, rather than rejoin HuA (now HuM).

Mazood Azhar was reported to have received assistance in setting up the JeM from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, and several Sunni sectarian outfits based in Pakistan. The formation of the outfit was endorsed by three religious school chiefs, Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai of the Majlis-e-Tawan-e-Islami (MT), Maulana Mufti Rashid Ahmed of the Dar-ul Ifta-e-wal-Irshad, and Maulana Sher Ali of the Sheikh-ul-Hadith Dar-ul Haqqania, and is known to have ties to the Pakistani political party Jamiat-i Ulema-i Islam Fazlur Rehman (JUI-F).

Azhar was reportedly joined in his new JEM venture by three- quarters of his former group's (Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM)) members. Soon after his release from jail, Azhar traveled to Afghanistan where he met with bin Laden. Azhar organized recruitment rallies across Pakistan that called for jihadis to fight in Kashmir, and these rallies were screened on the country's state-owned television station. The JeM leader was placed under house arrest in Pakistan in December 2002 after the country's President, Pervez Musharraf, banned the group and froze its assets in January 2002.

Learn more about these U.S. Department of State classifications:

Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs)

Terrorist Exclusion List (TEL)