US assures India to take up Lakhvi’s release issue

A day after India sought the UN’s intervention following the release of 26/11 Mumbai terror attack mastermind and LeT commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) committee has assured New Delhi that it will take up the issue of his release at the organisations’s next meeting, which is expected to be held in the next few days.

Earlier, Asoke Mukerji, India’s ambassador to the United Nations, had written a letter to the chair of UNSC al-Qaida sanctions committee ambassador Jim McLay, and had said that Lakhvi’s release violates the provision of the committee concerning Al-Qaeda and associated individuals and entities.

India also said that since Lakhvi is a listed terrorist, he can neither give nor receive money, as all his assets and financial resources have to be frozen, and any bail money given by or for him is also a violation of the provisions of the sanction committee.

The UN committee had, in 2008, listed Lakhvi as a terrorist having links with LeT and Al-Qaeda, responsible for planning, facilitating, financing and perpetrating several activities. He was also responsible for directing several operations in Iraq and Southeast Asia.

The UN committee’s website says, “In the past few years, Lakhvi has played an important role in LeT fundraising activities, receiving donations from al-Qaida affiliates on behalf of LeT. He has also managed a training camp in Afghanistan.”

Lakhvi, along with six others terrorists Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hamad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Younis Anjum, were charged for executing the Mumbai attack, which killed 166 people. He was later arrested, and the trial had been underway since then.

Lakhvi was released in March 2015, after Islamabad High Court ruled his detention and illegal. The court had said that it didn’t have sufficient evidence to prove his involvement in Mumbai terror attack. His release infuriate India, and several other countries including the US, the UK, Russia, France and Germany raised concerns, and asked for him to be rearrested.

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