Mumbai attacks: You can’t try me, Hafiz Saeed tells US court

Advocate AK Dogar says we cannot expect justice from any American court.

LAHORE: Jamatud Dawa (JD) ameer Hafiz Muhammad Saeed has refused to accept the jurisdiction of an American court that summoned him in a case filed by four American Jews claiming damages for the killing of their relatives in the Mumbai attacks of November 2008.

Saeed submitted his objection to the summons to the US court through Advocate AK Dogar. The New York Eastern US District Court summoned Saeed, ISI chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha, and other high ranking military officials in a lawsuit moved by Shimon Rosenberg and three other Jews charging the defendants with abetting the Mumbai attacks in which several foreigners were among the 164 killed.

Dogar said that he did not recognise the jurisdiction of any US court, but he was filing the reply in protest at the “unwarranted and illegal” summons. He said that neither international law nor American law allowed the US court to extend its jurisdiction to another country. “We cannot expect justice from any American court, even if it had jurisdiction,” he added. Dogar said that Saeed was a philanthropist and had nothing to do with Lashkar-i-Taiba, which was allegedly behind the Mumbai attacks. He said that the JD was a charitable organisation. He said it was “outright defamation” to call Saeed a terrorist and his client had been “sorely stung” by the US court’s remarks.

Opening of medical colleges challenged

A petition was filed in the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday challenging the opening of four medical colleges in the province by the Punjab government without recognition from the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC).

The petition was filed by Advocate Noushab A Khan who said that the degrees from these colleges will hold no value if the colleges were not recognised by the PMDC. He said the government should have met the eligibility criteria including college building, qualified faculty, attached teaching hospital, fully equipped laboratory, library and hospital but the newly opened colleges lacked some of these basic requirements. He asked the court to declare the opening of these colleges illegal.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 20^th,  2011.