Pakistan is yet to provide access to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to Sajid Mir, who is accused of planning and orchestrating the 26/11 attacks, the Hindustan Times reported. This is necessary for Islamabad if it wants to exit from the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) since it has to show that concrete actions have been taken against terror groups in Pakistan.
Sajid Mir belongs to the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a UN-designated terrorist group under the UNSC Resolution 1267 Al-Qaeda Sanctions List. The FBI wants him for his terror conspiracy against a Danish newspaper and its employee in 2008 and in 2011 an Illinois court indicted and issued a warrant against him, the Hindustan Times said in its report.
The US FBI has asked Islamabad to provide access to Mir for interrogation regarding Mumbai attacks but according to people familiar with the developments Islamabad is unhappy because it will reveal the links between the LeT and the Pakistani deep state who together planned attacks on Mumbai.
Mir is also accused of running networks where youths were radicalised and then trained in combat to launch terrorist attacks. The jihadist’s involvement in this led to the birth of the Indian Mujahideen group where radicalized Indian youth were trained to carry out attacks against their own nation.
The report by Hindustan Times said Pakistan will ‘block access to the FBI as it has done in the past’. China also has a role to play in this as they vetoed the designation of Mir as a global terrorist by the 1267 UN Sanctions committee in September.
There is a bounty of $5 million on Mir’s head. Israel also wants access to him as he was the lead man who ordered the LeT terrorists to kill Israeli hostages at Chabad House at Nariman Point in Mumbai. He told them to take a headshot.
The Hindustan Times report said that China has ‘no qualms’ and is likely to readily ‘block any move against Islamabad’ at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) by ‘citing rules and obscure procedures’ as evidenced by their recent blocking of the designation of terrorists Abdul Rehman Makki of the LeT and leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) Rauf Azhar as global terrorists.
Pakistan earlier claimed that Mir had been killed over the past decade but later claimed to arrest him and said that a local court handed him a 15-year prison sentence. Pakistani media outlets claim Mir remains in Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore but people familiar with the developments from the intelligence community told the Hindustan Times that he is being courted by the Pakistani deep state.
170 people including six Americans were killed in Mumbai attacks, orchestrated by the LeT and the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The mayhem went on for three days as LeT and ISI gave commands from Karachi.
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