Court grants bail to alleged Mumbai attacks mastermind
The Mumbai 60-hour siege on India's economic capital left 166 people dead and was blamed on the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Relations between the two countries worsened dramatically after the carnage, in which 10 gunmen attacked luxury hotels, a popular cafe, a train station and a Jewish centre.
Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, accused of masterminding the violence, was granted bail by a judge in Islamabad.
"We had moved a bail application with the Islamabad anti-terror court on December 10, today the judge granted bail to my client after hearing arguments from both sides," Lakhvi's lawyer Rizwan Abbasi told AFP.
Prosecutor Mohammad Chaudhry Azhar confirmed the court had granted bail.
The court's decision comes a day after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to crack down on terror groups in the country, after Taliban gunmen massacred 148 people at the Army Public School in Peshawar.
The premier on Wednesday announced that a six-year moratorium on the death penalty would be lifted for those convicted of terror offences.
The horror of the Mumbai carnage played out on live television around the world, as commandos battled the heavily-armed gunmen, who arrived by sea on the evening of November 26.
It took the authorities three days to regain full control of the city and New Delhi has long said there is evidence that "official agencies" in Pakistan were involved in plotting the attack.
Islamabad denies the charge but LeT's charitable arm Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) operates openly in the country.
Seven Pakistani suspects have been charged with planning and financing the Mumbai attacks but the failure to advance their trials has been a major obstacle to normalising ties with India.
Delhi has accused Islamabad of prevaricating over the trials, while Pakistan has claimed India failed to hand over crucial evidence.
The sole surviving gunman from Mumbai, Pakistani-born Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, was hanged in India in 2012.
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