Pakistan to challenge release of top militant

Jul 3, 2009, 13:28 GMT

   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.