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Pakistan jails leader of group linked to Mumbai attacks

Pakistan jails leader of group linked to Mumbai attacks

A Pakistani court on Friday (8) sentenced a militant leader accused of plotting the 2008 Mumbai attacks to five years in jail for terror financing.

Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a senior figure in the banned militant organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), was arrested in the eastern city of Lahore on Saturday where he was running a medical dispensary.


The police counterterrorism department in the Pakistani province of Punjab accused Lakhvi of using the dispensary to collect funds for militant activities.

The court order, seen by AFP, sentenced Lakhvi to "rigorous imprisonment for five years" on three separate counts involving terror funding.

"All the sentences shall run concurrently," it said.

LeT and Lakhvi are accused by India and the United States of plotting the four-day Mumbai assault in 2008 that left 166 people dead.

Delhi has long seethed at Pakistan's failure to hand over or prosecute those accused of planning and organising the attacks.

Lakhvi was detained in 2015 over the attacks but released months later. The government slapped him with a series of detention orders but judges repeatedly cancelled them.

He was designated a terrorist by the United Nations in December 2008 for being associated with LeT and Al-Qaeda.

Earlier this year, Pakistan also arrested firebrand cleric and alleged mastermind of the attacks Hafiz Saeed, who heads the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a wing of LeT.

Saeed was later jailed by a court for five years and six months on terror charges.

He has denied involvement in the attacks.

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US president Donald Trump sparked fresh controversy on Thursday by resharing a racist post from American commentator Michael Savage that called India, China and other nations "hellholes."
The Ministry of External Affairs responded with minimal comment.

"We've seen some reports. That's where I'll leave it," MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said during a weekly briefing on Thursday evening. He offered no further reaction to the post Trump shared with millions of followers.

The incident comes as India and the United States continue trade negotiations. Jaiswal confirmed an Indian team travelled to Washington DC for talks, describing discussions as "ongoing and constructive."

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