It’s been nearly seven years since Pakistani terrorists’ four-day assault across Mumbai, India. Now a Pakistani court has freed the operational mastermind of those bloody attacks on just $3,000 bail.
The attacks — against a hotel, a hospital, a Jewish community center and other targets — killed 166 and injured 308.
Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and six other members of Lashkar-e-Taiba — which is on both US and UN lists of terrorist groups — have been on trial since 2009, a proceeding that has moved at a snail’s pace and in near-total secrecy.
Now the court has ordered only Lakhvi’s release.
Though he remains a defendant, it seems clear that the Pakistani military — and particularly its ISI intelligence service — doesn’t want to see him or his associates vigorously prosecuted.
Pakistan did begin a campaign against Islamist terror after last December’s barbaric Taliban attack on a Peshawar school, where terrorists shot and even burned alive 150 students and teachers. Yet the government has conspicuously failed to target Lashkar-e-Taiba in that crackdown.
It gets worse: Lakhvi’s release came just days after the State Department approved a billion-dollar arms sale to Pakistan that includes 15 attack helicopters and 1,000 Hellfire missiles, all meant to fight terrorists — like Lashkar-e-Taiba. (The deal will go through unless Congress now opts to block it.)
A spokesman for Pakistan’s foreign ministry insists it would “not be proper to cast aspersions on Pakistan’s commitment to countering terrorism.”
The State Department seems to be buying it. Spokeswoman Jen Psaki, while expressing “grave concern” over Lakhvi’s release, reiterated that “Pakistan is a critical partner in the fight against terrorism.”
Consider us unconvinced.
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