ISLAMABAD:
Pakistan on Thursday rejected as absurd attempts to “drag” its top spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), through investigations into the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
“Pakistan is committed to bringing the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks to justice and the trial of the seven accused in this connection is under way. Dragging the ISI into this in any manner is preposterous,” Foreign Office spokesperson Abdul Basit told a weekly media briefing in the capital.
His comments came as India marks two years of the coordinated attacks on luxury hotels, a railway station, cafe and Jewish cultural centre on the evening of November 26, 2008, that left 166 people dead. India blames banned outfit LeT for masterminding the Mumbai attacks.
On Wednesday, a US court issued summons to senior ISI officials including its chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha in response to a lawsuit by relatives of American Rabbi Gavriel Noah and Rivka Hertzberg killed in the 26/11 attacks.
There have been reports blaming the ISI for having trained 10 people who unleashed terror in Mumbai for almost three days. The assault derailed the four-year-long composite dialogue between Pakistan and India.
A report in the British newspaper The Guardian had earlier claimed that David Headley, who confessed to surveying targets for the attacks, told Indian interrogators about the ISI’s support in the incident.
Headley described dozens of meetings between officers of the ISI and senior militants from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), alleged the paper, citing a 109-page Indian government report into his interrogation.
Diplomatic message
In an official diplomatic message delivered to the Pakistan embassy in New Delhi, India urged Pakistan to “fulfil its obligation and commitment” to bring the plotters to justice.
The letter accused Islamabad of stalling over the trial in Pakistan of seven suspects accused of plotting the attacks. “New Delhi expresses regret for not receiving feedback on issues raised by it,” the letter said. The suspects on trial include the alleged mastermind of the attacks, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, and LeT operative Zarar Shah.
However, Basit insisted that a lot had been done by Islamabad and rejected allegations that the country was being lenient to the assailants. With additional input from. AFP
Published in The Express Tribune, November 26th, 2010.
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