Islamabad - Pakistan's government plans Saturday to
challenge last month's release of Hafiz Saeed, the head of an Islamic
charity suspected of being a front for a group accused of the Mumbai
terrorist attacks, a Pakistani official said.
'We had a plan to file an appeal against the setting-aside of his
detention order in the Supreme Court today, but we got late and now
we'll do it tomorrow,' Attorney General Latif Khan Khosa told the
German Press Agency dpa Friday.
The radical cleric along with his associate was placed under house
arrest on December 11 after the United Nations banned his charity,
Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), as a front for the terrorist organization
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
The LeT is believed to be responsible for terrorist attacks in
November in the Indian financial hub of Mumbai, which killed more
than 170 people. But the Lahore High Court released Saeed on June 2,
saying there were insufficient grounds to detain him.
India received the court verdict with 'disappointment,' and an
Indian court last month issued an arrest warrant for Saeed for his
alleged involvement in the four-day gun-and-bomb attacks in Mumbai on
hotels, a cafe, hospital and Jewish centre.
Pakistan has already arrested the accused mastermind of the Mumbai
attacks and a senior LeT leader, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, along with
seven associates. But their trial has yet to be initiated because the
two countries have not completed their exchange of information about
the attacks.
The Mumbai attacks created tension between the two nuclear-armed
rivals and led to a military escalation and suspension of the
5-year-old peace process aimed at easing relations and solving
contentious issues.
The United States has recently pushed New Delhi to restart
diplomatic engagement with Islamabad so the Islamic country could
focus on its fight against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants in its
north-western region along the Afghan border.
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