...The US has been on its trail for some time now, but could not do much because the JuD had sprouted roots in almost all areas of Pakistani life. The Mumbai attacks resurrected US security agencies' interest in this outfit.

And the reason for that, sources said, was that Saeed's family had been making determined tracks to the US -- to live there as imams and preach and raise funds for jihad.

The evidence for that came in bits and pieces. The first to land in the US was Muhammad Masood, Saeed's brother, who arrived in 1987 on a J-1 exchange visitor visa. He lived in the Boston area, working odd jobs until he started teaching at the Islamic Academy of New England at the Islamic Center of New England in Sharon, Massachusetts. Masood was arrested in November 2006 and charged with visa fraud and other unnamed crimes.

The second family member to arrive was Abdul Hannan, Saeed's brother-in-law (married to Masood's sister). Hannan arrived in the late-1990s, coming to the US through another member of their organisation, Muhammad Khalil, who is serving time currently in a US jail. By 1998, Hannan himself was in jail, also in Massachusetts.

He was out by 2002, and for the next couple of years floated around another US state, Rhode Island, also as an imam, before returning, as imam to Massachusetts. Hannan was again arrested in November 2006 with his brother-in-law Masood. So far, there were two members of Saeed's family in US jails.

The third member, another brother of Saeed named Hamid arrived in the US in 2001 for a programme at Harvard University. He returned to the US later in the year and became an imam at the Islamic Society of Greater Worcester. In October 2007, Hamid was deported to Pakistan, on visa irregularities. But one of the reasons, said sources, was that the US discovered that he used to run a safe house for LeT terrorists in Moon Chowk, Lahore, and that his imam activities in the US were all about teaching jihad to youngsters there...