48 hours after Peshawar, 26/11 butcher walks

ISLAMABAD: A day after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan’s political leadership vowed to fight the last terrorist standing, a Rawalpindi anti-terrorism court on Thursday granted bail to Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the key handler in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks case, causing outrage in India.
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Lakhvi, 54, and six others had filed bail applications on Wednesday in midst of a lawyers’ strike called to condemn the Peshawar school massacre that left 148 people, including 132 children, dead.
Lakhvi’s bail comes a day after India expressed full solidarity with Pakistan in the aftermath of the Peshawar massacre, and the court order led New Delhi to react strongly against the bail. The court said the charge-sheet against Lakhvi and other accused was flawed and lacking in evidence. The prosecutor did not say whether the government would appeal in a higher court against the court’s bail order.
Sources said the Federal Investigation Agency, which had provided solid evidence to the court about LeT’s involvement in the Mumbai attacks, disagreed with the bail but had to accept anti-terrorism court judge Kausar Abbas Zaidi’s order.

The court directed Lakhvi, a trusted lieutenant of Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, to pay surety bonds worth Rs 5,00,000 ($5,000) before his release. Advocate Rizwan Abbasi had filed the bail application of the seven accused a day earlier, when lawyers across the country were on strike over the school carnage.
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“We were not expecting this decision as we were still to produce a good number of witnesses in the case. We are awaiting the court’s detailed order before giving further comment on the decision," said chief prosecutor Chaudhry Azhar. Lakhvi’s counsel Raja Rizwan Abbasi told agencies that the court had granted bail as “evidence against Lakhvi was deficient".
Operations commander of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, the parent organization of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Lakhvi has been one among the seven accused charged with planning, financing and executing the 26/11 Mumbai carnage that killed 166 people. Six other accused are Hammad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jamil Riaz, Younas Anjum, Jamil Ahmed, Mazhar Iqbal and Abdul Majid.

He and many of his associates were arrested from LeT’s headquarters in Muzaffarabad in December 2008 and the case against them registered in February 2009. Since then, the case had been moving at a snail’s pace with almost negligible headway.
Following the confession of Ajmal Kasab, the lone fidayeen survivor of the Mumbai attack, naming Lakhvi as his trainer, Syed Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jandal, an Indian national who was arrested in and deported from Saudi Arabia in June 2012, too confessed he was in the control room with Lakhvi in Karachi monitoring the Mumbai attacks. Pakistani-American jihadi David Headley too had confessed to Lakhvi’s key role in the Mumbai attacks.

Earlier, the FIA, which had investigated the Mumbai attacks case, had told the court that those who killed over 166 people in Mumbai belonged to the LeT and had been trained in Pakistan.
Rizwan Abbasi said the defence would soon file bail applications of the other six accused. The in-camera hearing of the case was held at Adiala Jail Rawalpindi due to security concerns. The judge adjourned the hearing till January 7.
In February 2009 interior minister Rehman Malik had said Lakhvi was in custody and under investigation as the “foremost mastermind" behind the Mumbai attacks.
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