LAHORE:
The Lahore High Court on Thursday allowed Jamat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed to make the Foreign Ministry a party in a petition seeking directions for the government to defend Saeed before a US court in the Mumbai attacks case.
The US court issued summons to Hafiz Saeed, ISI chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha and some other officials as a result of a lawsuit filed by relatives of US nationals killed in the Mumbai attacks. During Thursday’s proceedings, Deputy Attorney General Nasim Kashmiri said Saeed’s case falls in the domain of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but he has not made the ministry party in his petition and instead wrongly put the Ministry of Defence and the ISI in the respondent memo.
Judge Umar Ata Bandial, giving time to the petitioner to file a new respondent memo in this regards, directed the Lahore High Court office to issue a notice to the Foreign Ministry seeking a reply on the matter immediately. The court then adjourned further proceedings on the matter till May 30.
US nationals Rabbi Gabriel Noah Holtzberg and his wife Rivka were killed in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Their son Moshe however survived and he along with others filed nine claims against banned outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) of which Saeed’s Jamaatud Dawa is said to be an affiliate.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 6th, 2011.
COMMENTS (6)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ