US officials have offered a reward of up to USD 5 million for information on Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri, head of a Pakistani group linked to Al-Qaeda and suspected of launching a 2006 suicide attack on the US consulate in Karachi.
The State Department said Kashmiri "is the commander of the terrorist organization Harakat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HUJI), which supports Al-Qaeda" and that the group has led training camps for the launching of several attacks in India and Pakistan.
The group is believed to have ordered the March 2, 2006 suicide bombing at the US consulate in Karachi that killed four people, including US diplomat David Foy, and injured 48 others.
In January 2010, a US federal grand jury indicted Kashmiri for terrorism-related offenses in connection with a plot to attack the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark following uproar over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.
Last August, Kashmiri was placed on a US list as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" and HUJI was labeled a "Foreign Terrorist Organization."
HUJI and Kashmiri have also been added to a United Nations blacklist of individuals and entities linked to the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Kashmiri was born in 1964 in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. He is approximately six feet tall and weighs about 90 kilogram.
He has black hair and been seen with a thick beard dyed white, black, or red at various times. He has lost sight in one eye, and often wears aviator-style sunglasses. He is missing an index finger, according to the State Department.
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