Lakhvi arrested on terror financing charges

MULTAN: Pakistan’s security forces arrested Saturday an alleged leader of the militant group that was behind the bloody 2008 Mumbai attacks in India.

An official with the Pakistani counterterrorism police, Shakil Ahmed, said Zaikur Rehman Lakhvi was nabbed from Lahore, on terrorism financing charges.

“Today, on 2 January 2021, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi was arrested in a case of terrorism financing registered by the CTD Punjab in Police Station CTD Lahore,” a CTD spokesperson said.

Lakhvi is alleged to be a leader of the Lashker-e-Taiba that organised the Mumbai attacks in 2008 that killed 166 people. Lakhvi was detained days after the Mumbai attacks but released in 2015 by the courts.

Pakistani authorities allege that Lakhvi was running a dispensary in Lahore as a front for financing militant activities. Lakhvi was a prominent figure in Hafiz Saeed’s charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which is believed to be a front for Lashker-e-Taiba.

According to a UN Security Council sanctions committee, Lakhvi is the chief of operations and military commander of the LeT.Hafiz Saeed, who has been designated a terrorist by the US Justice Department and has a $10 million bounty on his head, is presently serving multiple jail terms in Pakistan after being convicted in several cases in recent months. The Pakistani government has seized Saeed’s extensive network of mosques, schools, seminaries and charities and other assets in the country.