Reputed Latino gang members indicted in attack on black youths

Two reputed Latino gang members are facing federal hate crime charges for allegedly carrying out racially motivated attacks on four black youngsters as part of a wider campaign of terror aimed at forcing African Americans out of a west Compton neighborhood, the U.S. attorney said Friday.

Jeffrey Aguilar, 19, and Efren Marquez, 21, were indicted Thursday by a grand jury on five felony civil rights charges in connection with a series of incidents that began New Year's Eve. Authorities allege they beat a young black man with a pipe and then turned their threats and racial epithets toward members of a black household where he fled. They pleaded not guilty in a downtown L.A. courtroom Friday.

"No one should have to look over their shoulder in fear because of who they are," said U.S. Atty. Andre Birotte, who announced the charges. "Hate-fueled crimes have no place in our society."

Birotte said the alleged actions of the pair were part of a pattern of racial intimidation of blacks by their alleged gang, including racial graffiti. "The Compton 155 gang has racial animus toward African Americans, and the gang has a practice of harassing and attacking African Americans with a goal of eliminating them from the west side of Compton," he said.

"The gang proudly proclaimed that they are "nk" with 'n' standing for an unfortunate well-known racial epithet and 'k' for killers," he said.

Birotte said that is what Aguilar and Marquez yelled when they jumped out of an SUV and first confronted a 17-year-old black youth on Compton Street.

The teen ran toward his girlfriend's house, where there were three other black youths. Aguilar and Marquez followed him. Aguilar then beat the 17-year-old with a metal pipe on the head and body, according to the indictment. Marquez, who was armed with a gun, briefly chased another youth who came out of the home before the reputed gang members left, prosecutors said.

"Unfortunately the gangsters returned with reinforcement, about 15 strong," Birotte said. "As the four victims were huddled inside the house, a window was smashed and they were met with racial slurs and epithets and warned they did not belong in this neighborhood."

According to the indictment, gang members stood in front of the small rental home and shouted "get out of the 'hood," racial epithets and "this is 155." One of the people inside called his mother, who phoned sheriff's deputies.

In the days that followed, prosecutors allege Marquez and other Compton 155 members drove by the home yelling, "You are going to die over here." According to the indictment, Marquez during a Jan. 25 telephone conversation with another uncharged suspect asked if any weapons had been seized from his vehicle. Sheriff's deputies arrested the pair last month after investigating a complaint from the victims.

The attacks on the family are the latest in a series of violent incidents in which Latino gangs targeted blacks in parts of greater Los Angeles over the last decade. Birotte noted that his office last year charged several Azusa gang members with hate crimes. In the Compton case, both men could face up to 10 years in prison for each of the five charges.

Compton, with a population of about 97,000, was predominantly black for many years. It is now 65% Latino and 33% black, according to the 2010 U.S. census.

Sheriff's investigators who worked with the FBI on the case said the victims are not associated with gangs and were innocent victims.

L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca said that even one hate crime was too many. "Racist-based violence is not only unacceptable but deserves the harshest of prosecutions," said Baca, whose deputies patrol Compton and investigated the case with the FBI.

richard.winton@latimes.com

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World Briefing | Asia: China: Woman Detained in Morgue to Be Compensated

China will compensate a woman who was held in a disused morgue as punishment for going to Beijing to petition against her husband’s jailing, the state media said Friday, in an unusual case of the government overturning an extrajudicial detention. The woman, Chen Qingxia, was held for three years in an abandoned bungalow once used to store bodies in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang after being abducted from Beijing by security officials, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. She had gone to the capital to seek redress for her husband, Song Lisheng, who she said was mistreated while serving an 18-month sentence at a labor camp, Xinhua said. The government will now pay the medical bills and living expenses for Ms. Chen and her husband and step up efforts to find their young son, who became separated from Ms. Chen when she was abducted in Beijing, Xinhua reported. The amount of compensation has yet to be decided.

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Minka Kelly: 'I'm Not Worthy' of Acting with Oprah

By Jennifer Cress

02/08/2013 at 07:40 PM EST

Minka Kelly as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Pacific Coast News

It's intimidating enough to play Jackie O, but Minka Kelly felt even more pressure to perform when she found out who was joining the cast of her latest film, The Butler.

"I'm not worthy. I feel so lucky and grateful. I was like, 'What am I doing here?!' " Kelly tells PEOPLE of starring alongside Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, John Cusack, Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Fonda and more in the upcoming film, which tells the story of a butler who served eight presidents.

The movie also features another major star: the one and only Oprah Winfrey. "I didn't get to meet Oprah because our shooting schedules were different, but she's a pretty loved lady," Kelly says. "I have yet to hear a bad thing about her!"

Kelly found that the most difficult part of playing Jackie Kennedy was nailing the former first lady's distinct accent. "I think she spoke in a way she thought she should speak, so getting that down was hard. There's a musicality and rhythm to the way she speaks," Kelly explains. "I went to sleep listening to her."

Another tough task? Slipping into the retro costumes. "My body is so different from her because I have curves, so fitting into those vintage clothes was actually really hard," she shares. "Also it was hot – and there was a lot of wool!"

Jennifer Graylock / Getty

But Kelly had no issue slipping into the stunning Oscar de la Renta gown (left) she strutted down the runway in at the Red Dress Collection fashion show in N.Y.C. on Wednesday night. The actress walked for the second year in a row in honor of The Heart Truth campaign, which encourages women to monitor their heart health.

For the month of February, Diet Coke will donate $1 for every person who uploads a heart-inspired photo to Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #showyourheart. Visit to dietcoke.com/showyourheart for more information.

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After early start, worst of flu season may be over

NEW YORK (AP) — The worst of the flu season appears to be over.

The number of states reporting intense or widespread illnesses dropped again last week, and in a few states there was very little flu going around, U.S. health officials said Friday.

The season started earlier than normal, first in the Southeast and then spreading. But now, by some measures, flu activity has been ebbing for at least four weeks in much of the country. Flu and pneumonia deaths also dropped the last two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

"It's likely that the worst of the current flu season is over," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

But flu is hard to predict, he and others stressed, and there have been spikes late in the season in the past.

For now, states like Georgia and New York — where doctor's offices were jammed a few weeks ago — are reporting low flu activity. The hot spots are now the West Coast and the Southwest.

Among the places that have seen a drop: Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Allentown, Pa., which put up a tent outside its emergency room last month to help deal with the steady stream of patients. There were about 100 patients each day back then. Now it's down to 25 and the hospital may pack up its tent next week, said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital.

"There's no question that we're seeing a decline," she said.

In early December, CDC officials announced flu season had arrived, a month earlier than usual. They were worried, saying it had been nine years since a winter flu season started like this one. That was 2003-04 — one of the deadliest seasons in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 deaths.

Like this year, the major flu strain was one that tends to make people sicker, especially the elderly, who are most vulnerable to flu and its complications

But back then, that year's flu vaccine wasn't made to protect against that bug, and fewer people got flu shots. The vaccine is reformulated almost every year, and the CDC has said this year's vaccine is a good match to the types that are circulating. A preliminary CDC study showed it is about 60 percent effective, which is close to the average.

So far, the season has been labeled moderately severe.

Like others, Lehigh Valley's Burger was cautious about making predictions. "I'm not certain we're completely out of the woods," with more wintry weather ahead and people likely to be packed indoors where flu can spread around, she said.

The government does not keep a running tally of flu-related deaths in adults, but has received reports of 59 deaths in children. The most — nine — were in Texas, where flu activity was still high last week. Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season, the CDC says

On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.

According to the CDC report, the number of states with intense activity is down to 19, from 24 the previous week, and flu is widespread in 38 states, down from 42.

Flu is now minimal in Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

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Online:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/

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A delicate new balancing act in senior healthcare

When Claire Gordon arrived at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, nurses knew she needed extra attention.

She was 96, had heart disease and a history of falls. Now she had pneumonia and the flu. A team of Cedars specialists converged on her case to ensure that a bad situation did not turn worse and that she didn't end up with a lengthy, costly hospital stay.

Frail seniors like Gordon account for a disproportionate share of healthcare expenditures because they are frequently hospitalized and often land in intensive care units or are readmitted soon after being released. Now the federal health reform law is driving sweeping changes in how hospitals treat a rapidly growing number of elderly patients.

The U.S. population is aging quickly: People older than 65 are expected to make up nearly 20% of it by 2030. Linda P. Fried, dean of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said now is the time to train professionals and test efforts to improve care and lower healthcare costs for elderly patients.

"It's incredibly important that we prepare for being in a society where there are a lot of older people," she said. "We have to do this type of experiment right now."

At Cedars-Sinai, where more than half the patients in the medical and surgical wards are 65 or older, one such effort is dubbed the "frailty project." Within 24 hours, nurses assess elderly patients for their risk of complications such as falls, bed sores and delirium. Then a nurse, social worker, pharmacist and physician assess the most vulnerable patients and make an action plan to help them.

The Cedars project stands out nationally because medical professionals are working together to identify high-risk patients at the front end of their hospitalizations to prevent problems at the back end, said Herb Schultz, regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"For seniors, it is better care, it is high-quality care and it is peace of mind," he said.

The effort and others like it also have the potential to reduce healthcare costs by cutting preventable medical errors and readmissions, Schultz said. The federal law penalizes hospitals for both.

Gordon, an articulate woman with brightly painted fingernails and a sense of humor, arrived at Cedars-Sinai by ambulance on a Monday.

Soon, nurse Jacquelyn Maxton was at her bedside asking a series of questions to check for problems with sleep, diet and confusion. The answers led to Gordon's designation as a frail patient. The next day, the project team huddled down the hall and addressed her risks one by one. Medical staff would treat the flu and pneumonia while at the same time addressing underlying health issues that could extend Gordon's stay and slow her recovery, both in the hospital and after going home.

To reduce the chance of falls, nurses placed a yellow band on her wrist that read "fall risk" and ensured that she didn't get up on her own. To prevent bed sores, they got her up and moving as often as possible. To cut down on confusion, they reminded Gordon frequently where she was and made sure she got uninterrupted sleep. Medical staff also stopped a few unnecessary medications that Gordon had been prescribed before her admission, including a heavy narcotic and a sleeping pill.

"It is really a holistic approach to the patient, not just to the disease that they are in here for," said Glenn D. Braunstein, the hospital's vice president for clinical innovation.

Previously, nurse Ivy Dimalanta said, she and her colleagues provided similar care but on a much more random basis. Under the project, the care has become standardized.

The healthcare system has not been well designed to address the needs of seniors who may have had a lifetime of health problems, said Mary Naylor, gerontology professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. As a result, patients sometimes fall through the cracks and return to hospitals again and again.

"That is not good for them and that is not good for society to be using resources in that way," Naylor said.

Using data from related projects, Cedars began a pilot program in 2011 and expanded it last summer. The research is continuing but early results suggest that the interventions are leading to fewer seniors being admitted to the intensive care unit and to shorter hospital stays, said Jeff Borenstein, researcher and lead clinician on the frailty project. "It definitely seems to be going in the right direction," he said.

The hospital is now working with Naylor and the University of Pennsylvania to design a program to help the patients once they go home.

"People who are frail are very vulnerable when they leave the hospital," said Harriet Udin Aronow, a researcher at Cedars. "We want to promote them being safe at home and continuing to recover."

In Gordon's case, she lives alone with the help of her children and a caregiver. The hospital didn't want her experiencing complications that would lengthen the stay, but they also didn't want to discharge her before she was ready. Under the health reform law, hospitals face penalties if patients come back too soon after being released.

Patients and their families often are unaware of the additional attention. Sitting in a chair in front of a vase of pink flowers, Gordon said she knew she would have to do her part to get out of the hospital quickly. "You have to move," she said. "I know you get bed sores if you stay in bed."

Gordon said she was comfortable at the hospital but she wanted to go back to her house as quickly as she could. "There's no place like home," she said.

Two days later, that's where she was.

anna.gorman@latimes.com

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Eddie Ray Routh, Accused of Killing Chris Kyle, ‘American Sniper,’ Had Troubled Past

DALLAS — Eddie Ray Routh, the former Marine corporal accused of killing Chris Kyle, an author and retired Navy SEAL sniper, had been released from a veterans hospital here four days before the shootings over the objections of his parents, Mr. Routh’s court-appointed lawyers said.

Mr. Routh, 25, and his relatives told the police in recent weeks and months that he had been deeply troubled and was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to court documents. He had a series of run-ins with the authorities in parts of North Texas, and had threatened to kill himself at least once, police records show.

Mr. Routh had been undergoing treatment at the Dallas V.A. Medical Center and Green Oaks Hospital, a psychiatric center in Dallas. On Jan. 24, Mr. Routh was released from the Dallas V.A. center but soon returned, and he was again released on Jan. 29, said his lawyers, R. Shay Isham and J. Warren St. John. On both occasions, Mr. Routh’s father and mother, Raymond and Jodi Routh, had protested his release, the lawyers said.

“She was begging them not to let him loose,” Mr. Isham said.

Four days after Mr. Routh’s release, Mr. Kyle, 38, and a friend, Chad Littlefield, 35, took Mr. Routh to a rural shooting range to help the young man, one of the ways Mr. Kyle often assisted troubled veterans. For reasons that remain unclear, the authorities said, Mr. Routh turned a semiautomatic handgun on the two men, shooting both multiple times and fleeing in Mr. Kyle’s truck before he was captured hours later near his home in the Dallas suburb of Lancaster.

A spokeswoman for the federal Department of Veterans Affairs said that without a signed privacy waiver from Mr. Routh, they could not disclose any protected health information.

Mr. Routh remained in custody at the Erath County Jail in Stephenville on $3 million bond. Mr. Isham said that on Tuesday, Mr. Routh refused to meet with his mother and Mr. St. John, unless he was given a cigarette. “He’s trying to play an angle — ‘I give you something, you give me something,’ ” Mr. Isham said. “He wouldn’t see anybody.”

Eleven days after graduating from high school in the nearby town of Midlothian, Mr. Routh began boot camp in June 2006 at age 18. In his senior yearbook, there is a photo of him talking with a recruiter. “I want to be one of the few and the proud,” he was quoted as saying, when asked why he was joining the Marines.

Mr. Routh served nearly four years, becoming a corporal shortly before he was discharged in June 2010. He was in Iraq in September 2007, and was part of a disaster-relief deployment to Haiti after the earthquake there in January 2010.

Since then, Mr. Routh appeared to be struggling, and his relatives seemed concerned about his mental state. Eight months before the shootings, Mr. Routh’s mother called the Lancaster police in May to report a burglary and appeared to name her son as the suspect. Nine pill bottles were taken, according to the police report. In September, the Lancaster police returned to the house after Mr. Routh threatened to kill himself and had become upset when his father told him he was going to sell his gun.

Court documents suggest that Mr. Routh may have become fixated with Mr. Kyle’s black Ford truck, because he told his sister, Laura Blevins, and her husband that he had killed the two men and had “traded his soul for a new truck.” But the documents also make clear that Mr. Routh was paranoid. “He said they were out shooting target practice and he couldn’t trust them so he killed them before they could kill him,” his sister’s husband, Gaines Blevins, told the authorities, according to court documents. “He said he couldn’t trust anyone anymore (and) everyone was out to get him.”

After a search of the house, Mr. Routh’s cellphone, a box of 9-millimeter ammunition and paraphernalia for smoking marijuana were seized.

The funeral for Mr. Littlefield will be Friday at 2 p.m. at First Baptist Church of Midlothian. A memorial service for Mr. Kyle will be held Monday at 1 p.m. at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, according to his Facebook page.

Manny Fernandez reported from Dallas, and Kathryn Jones from Lancaster, Tex.

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Kris Humphries: Why He Won't Divorce Kim Kardashian

02/07/2013 at 07:00 PM EST

Despite Kim Kardashian's pressing for a divorce, Kris Humphries deeply believes their 72-day marriage should be annulled and he won't give up the fight, a source tells PEOPLE.

"Kris only wants an annulment," says the source close to Humphries. "He never wanted to be married more than once and he feels like she cheated him out of the chance to have a real, loving marriage."

The Brooklyn Nets forward is also not sympathetic to Kardashian's pleas to end the battle for the sake of the baby she's having with boyfriend Kanye West, adds the source.

"He feels that even if she's pregnant, she still has to deal with the mess she made," the source says. "He thinks their entire marriage was a fraud, and he's not going to just give up because of the situation."

Kardashian, who says she's due to deliver in early July, is asking a judge to start a divorce trial as soon as possible or at the very least to have their marriage legally dissolved while they litigate other issues.

"There was no fraud on my part," she says in papers filed last month in L.A. Superior Court. "I wish this issue to be tried immediately so that this false claim can be put to rest and I can move on with my life."

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Southern diet, fried foods, may raise stroke risk

Deep-fried foods may be causing trouble in the Deep South. People whose diets are heavy on them and sugary drinks like sweet tea and soda were more likely to suffer a stroke, a new study finds.

It's the first big look at diet and strokes, and researchers say it might help explain why blacks in the Southeast — the nation's "stroke belt" — suffer more of them.

Blacks were five times more likely than whites to have the Southern dietary pattern linked with the highest stroke risk. And blacks and whites who live in the South were more likely to eat this way than people in other parts of the country were. Diet might explain as much as two-thirds of the excess stroke risk seen in blacks versus whites, researchers concluded.

"We're talking about fried foods, french fries, hamburgers, processed meats, hot dogs," bacon, ham, liver, gizzards and sugary drinks, said the study's leader, Suzanne Judd of the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

People who ate about six meals a week featuring these sorts of foods had a 41 percent higher stroke risk than people who ate that way about once a month, researchers found.

In contrast, people whose diets were high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish had a 29 percent lower stroke risk.

"It's a very big difference," Judd said. "The message for people in the middle is there's a graded risk" — the likelihood of suffering a stroke rises in proportion to each Southern meal in a week.

Results were reported Thursday at an American Stroke Association conference in Honolulu.

The federally funded study was launched in 2002 to explore regional variations in stroke risks and reasons for them. More than 20,000 people 45 or older — half of them black — from all 48 mainland states filled out food surveys and were sorted into one of five diet styles:

—Southern: Fried foods, processed meats (lunchmeat, jerky), red meat, eggs, sweet drinks and whole milk.

—Convenience: Mexican and Chinese food, pizza, pasta.

—Plant-based: Fruits, vegetables, juice, cereal, fish, poultry, yogurt, nuts and whole-grain bread.

—Sweets: Added fats, breads, chocolate, desserts, sweet breakfast foods.

—Alcohol: Beer, wine, liquor, green leafy vegetables, salad dressings, nuts and seeds, coffee.

"They're not mutually exclusive" — for example, hamburgers fall into both convenience and Southern diets, Judd said. Each person got a score for each diet, depending on how many meals leaned that way.

Over more than five years of follow-up, nearly 500 strokes occurred. Researchers saw clear patterns with the Southern and plant-based diets; the other three didn't seem to affect stroke risk.

There were 138 strokes among the 4,977 who ate the most Southern food, compared to 109 strokes among the 5,156 people eating the least of it.

There were 122 strokes among the 5,076 who ate the most plant-based meals, compared to 135 strokes among the 5,056 people who seldom ate that way.

The trends held up after researchers took into account other factors such as age, income, smoking, education, exercise and total calories consumed.

Fried foods tend to be eaten with lots of salt, which raises blood pressure — a known stroke risk factor, Judd said. And sweet drinks can contribute to diabetes, the disease that celebrity chef Paula Deen — the queen of Southern cuisine — revealed she had a year ago.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, drugmaker Amgen Inc. and General Mills Inc. funded the study.

"This study does strongly suggest that food does have an influence and people should be trying to avoid these kinds of fatty foods and high sugar content," said an independent expert, Dr. Brian Silver, a Brown University neurologist and stroke center director at Rhode Island Hospital.

"I don't mean to sound like an ogre. I know when I'm in New Orleans I certainly enjoy the food there. But you don't have to make a regular habit of eating all this stuff."

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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A cop's nightmare

As the scope of Christopher Jordan Dorner's ambitions sank in Thursday, thousands of police hunted him and waited, on edge, as he seemed determined to hunt them.

At departments across the Southland, bulletproof vests and riot gear were strapped on, shotguns readied. Motorcycle cops rode inside the protective metal of squad cars. The joking morning chatter had been replaced by grim quiet.

Their adversary was a linebacker-sized ex-cop with a multitude of firearms, military training and a seemingly bottomless grudge born when the LAPD fired him in 2009. Before dawn Thursday, authorities said, Dorner had already struck twice – grazing an LAPD officer's head with a bullet in Corona, and firing on two Riverside officers, killing one and wounding another.

Photos: A tense manhunt amid tragic deaths

It was the third homicide police have attributed to Dorner, 33, a former U.S. Navy reservist who is also accused of killing the daughter of a retired LAPD captain and her fiance in Irvine.

Police across California and Nevada launched an unprecedented manhunt involving hundreds of officers from dozens of agencies.

In a Facebook manifesto police say Dorner wrote, he ranted against LAPD personnel who he said fired him unfairly. He threatened revenge, "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" against police and their families, saying he would stalk them "where you work, live, eat, and sleep."

Photos: A fugitive's life on Facebook

Authorities took him at his word.

"Of course he knows what he's doing — we trained him," Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said. "It is extremely worrisome and scary, especially to the police officers involved."

Police are guarding at least 40 people mentioned in his screed. Security was tight at LAPD headquarters, with officers stationed around the perimeter. Beck himself was being escorted by extra officers.

Police are struggling to discern a pattern in Dorner's recent movements. A burly man matching his description tried to steal a boat about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Southwestern Yacht Club in Point Loma, tying up the elderly owner, threatening him with a gun and saying he wanted to flee to Mexico. The thief gave up when a rope got tangled in the propeller. Dorner's old LAPD badge was found a short distance from the boat.

Three hours later, 100 miles away near an offramp of Interstate 15 in Corona, a resident recognized Dorner's Nissan Titan pickup truck and flagged down LAPD officers who were en route to guarding one of his would-be targets, police said.

After a brief chase, Dorner opened fire with a rifle, grazing one officer in the head with a bullet that came within inches of killing him. Police returned fire, but the gunman escaped.

Minutes later in nearby Riverside, two city police officers were attacked as they sat in their marked patrol car at a red light at the corner of Magnolia and Arlington avenues, police said. Bullets penetrated the windshield and struck both officers in the chest, killing a 34-year-old veteran and wounding the 27-year-old officer he was training. That officer is expected to survive.

It was a "cowardly ambush," said Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz.Police across the Inland Empire converged on Riverside to help with the manhunt, and officers held rifles and shotguns as they stood guard outside the police station.

"My opinion of the suspect is unprintable," Diaz said. "The manifesto I think speaks for itself as evidence enough of a depraved and abandoned mind and heart."

The names of the officers who were shot have not been released. There is fear Dorner may come after them again, or their families. At schools near the shootings, some wary parents kept their children home. Other schools were closed.

As news of the shootings crackled across police radios before dawn, the hunt for Dorner's Nissan Titan pickup truck intensified.

About 5:20 a.m. in Torrance, two women were delivering the Los Angeles Times from their blue pickup when LAPD officers spotted the truck.

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Lashkar-e-Taiba Founder Takes Less Militant Tone in Pakistan

Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

“I move about like an ordinary person — that’s my style,” said Mr. Saeed. “My fate is in the hands of God, not America.”

LAHORE, Pakistan — Ten million dollars does not seem to buy much in this bustling Pakistani city. That is the sum the United States is offering for help in convicting Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, perhaps the country’s best-known jihadi leader. Yet Mr. Saeed lives an open, and apparently fearless, life in a middle-class neighborhood here.

“I move about like an ordinary person — that’s my style,” said Mr. Saeed, a burly 64-year-old, reclining on a bolster as he ate a chicken supper. “My fate is in the hands of God, not America.”

Mr. Saeed is the founder, and is still widely believed to be the true leader, of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group that carried out the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, in which more than 160 people, including six Americans, were killed. The United Nations has placed him on a terrorist list and imposed sanctions on his group. But few believe he will face trial any time soon in a country that maintains a perilous ambiguity toward jihadi militancy, casting a benign eye on some groups, even as it battles others that attack the state.

Mr. Saeed’s very public life seems more than just an act of mocking defiance against the Obama administration and its bounty, analysts say. As American troops prepare to leave Afghanistan next door, Lashkar is at a crossroads, and its fighters’ next move — whether to focus on fighting the West, disarm and enter the political process, or return to battle in Kashmir — will depend largely on Mr. Saeed.

At his Lahore compound — a fortified house, office and mosque — Mr. Saeed is shielded not only by his supporters, burly men wielding Kalashnikovs outside his door, but also by the Pakistani state. On a recent evening, police officers screened visitors at a checkpoint near his house, while other officers patrolled an adjoining park, watching by floodlight for intruders.

His security seemingly ensured, Mr. Saeed has over the past year addressed large public meetings and appeared on prime-time television, and is now even giving interviews to Western news media outlets he had previously eschewed.

He says that he wants to correct “misperceptions.” During an interview with The New York Times at his home last week, Mr. Saeed insisted that his name had been cleared by the Pakistani courts. “Why does the United States not respect our judicial system?” he asked.

Still, he says he has nothing against Americans, and warmly described a visit he made to the United States in 1994, during which he spoke at Islamic centers in Houston, Chicago and Boston. “At that time, I liked it,” he said with a wry smile.

During that stretch, his group was focused on attacking Indian soldiers in the disputed territory of Kashmir — the fight that led the military’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate to help establish Lashkar-e-Taiba in 1989. But that battle died down over the past decade, and Lashkar began projecting itself through its charity wing, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which runs a tightly organized network of hospitals and schools across Pakistan.

The Mumbai attacks propelled Lashkar-e-Taiba to notoriety. But since then, Mr. Saeed’s provocations toward India have been largely verbal. Last week he stirred anger there by suggesting that Bollywood’s highest-paid actor, Shah Rukh Khan, a Muslim, should move to Pakistan. In the interview, he said he prized talking over fighting in Kashmir.

“The militant struggle helped grab the world’s attention,” he said. “But now the political movement is stronger, and it should be at the forefront of the struggle.”

Pakistan analysts caution that Mr. Saeed’s new openness is no random occurrence, however. “This isn’t out of the blue,” said Shamila N. Chaudhry, a former Obama administration official and an analyst at the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm. “These guys don’t start talking publicly just like that.”

What it amounts to, however, may depend on events across the border in Afghanistan, where his groups have been increasingly active in recent years. In public, Mr. Saeed has been a leading light in the Defense of Pakistan Council, a coalition of right-wing groups that lobbied against the reopening of NATO supply routes through Pakistan last year. More quietly, Lashkar fighters have joined the battle, attacking Western troops and Indian diplomatic facilities in Afghanistan, intelligence officials say.

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