Advertisement
Advertisement
Pakistan
Get more with myNEWS
A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you
Learn more
Smoke pours from the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai on November 29, 2008, after Muslim militants attacked. Photo: AFP

US slams Pakistan for releasing Mumbai attack ‘mastermind’

Pakistan

Pakistan’s decision to set free the alleged mastermind of the 2008 attacks in Mumbai drew quick criticism from the US, where President Donald Trump has demanded that Pakistani leaders take tougher action against terrorists.

Hafiz Saeed, who allegedly planned attacks in Mumbai in 2008 that left 164 people dead, had been detained at his house in Lahore without charges since January. A Pakistan High Court had ordered his release, and police withdrew from the home on Friday, his spokesman Habibullah Qamar said in a text message.

Hafiz Saeed, head of banned Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, arrives for Friday prayers in Lahore on 24 November 24, 2017. Photo: EPA

“The United States is deeply concerned” that Saeed has been released from house arrest, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. She said Saeed leads Lashkar-e-Taiba, “a designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent civilians in terrorist attacks, including a number of American citizens”.

Saeed has consistently denied any involvement in the Mumbai attacks. He heads Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which the US says is a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba. A United Nations Security Council panel placed sanctions on four alleged members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, including Saeed, in 2008 at the request of the US and India.

Security camera footage of two Indian soldiers confront a gunmen at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station in Mumbai on November 26, 2008. Photo: Reuters

Saeed’s detention in Lahore since January was initially interpreted as an attempt to placate the US, which has taken a tougher tone on Pakistan under Trump. In a speech in August, Trump said: “Pakistan often gives safe haven to agents of chaos, violence, and terror” and that must change immediately or the US would stop providing financial help.

Saeed’s release suggests Pakistan’s military, which has controlled the nation for much of its 70-year history, is once again asserting control over the country’s civilian authorities and that terrorism suspects will not be genuinely prosecuted by Islamabad, said Harsh Pant, an international relations professor at King’s College London.

Saeed performs a sermon during Friday prayers in Lahore. Photo: EPA

Since a September by-election in Lahore, where a number of right-wing religious groups strongly campaigned for independent candidates, Pakistan’s military has been accused of “mainstreaming” extremist outfits and re-branding them as political entities to contest elections – a charge the military denies. Elements of the armed forces have historically fostered ties with insurgents targeting neighbouring Afghanistan and India.

Saeed arrives for Friday prayers. Photo: EPA

“The whole process looks very suspicious, it doesn’t look like there was ever a serious process underway,” Pant said. “In some sense, this justifies the Trump administration’s harder approach on Pakistan.”

With Beijing financing more than US$55 billion of Pakistani infrastructure projects as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, some analysts have suggested that Pakistan can to some extent ignore pressure from the US

India-Pakistan relations are already at a low point, particularly under the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, but Saeed’s release will reinforce the view in New Delhi that peace talks would be pointless while the military is seemingly overpowering civilian institutions, Pant said.

The point the Indian “government has been making is, who do we talk to?” he said. Pakistan’s “civil-military relations are at the point where the civilians seem to have completely lost the plot and the military is reasserting itself”.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Release of ‘Mumbai mastermind’ riles US
Post