The Lahore High Court on Wednesday adjourned the hearing of a petition by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed seeking government assistance in his defence in a US court hearing a lawsuit moved by relatives of Americans killed in the Mumbai attack of November 2008.
The court adjourned the hearing because amicus curie (friend of the court) Advocate Ahmar Bilal Sufi was out of the country and unable to attend.
The hearing will resume on December 31. At the last hearing, the court had sought a reply to the petition from the Ministry of Defence.
The plaintiffs in the US court have filed nine claims, seeking a total of $675,000 (Rs65.27 million), against Hafiz Saeed, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, Azam Cheema and Sajid Majid, allegedly of the banned outfit Lashkar-i-Taiba (LeT), as well as former ISI chiefs Lt-Gen Nadeem Taj and Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha and alleged ISI members Major Iqbal and Major Sameer Ali. They are alleged to have provided material support to the Mumbai attackers.
Saeed submitted in his petition that he was head of a charity organisation named Jamaatud Dawa and had no connection with LeT. He said he had already been tried by the LHC and found to have no links to any terrorist organisation.
He said that the government had announced on December 31, 2010, shortly after the lawsuit was filed in the US, that it would defend then ISI chief Lt Gen Pasha in court. Saeed said that under Article 25 of the Constitution, all citizens were equal before the law and entitled to the equal protection of the law, so the government should also defend him in the US court.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 6th, 2012.
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