ISLAMABAD // Pakistani authorities have freed the alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks on bail, sources said on Friday, a move likely to further strain ties with India.
Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, accused over the terror siege that left 166 dead, was released late on Thursday, according to an official at Adiyala Prison in Rawalpindi, next to Islamabad.
The three-day onslaught on India’s financial capital was blamed on banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-i-Taiba (LeT). LeT’s charitable wing Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) confirmed Lakhvi’s release.
“Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi has been released from jail. He is free now and in a secure place,” a senior JuD official said.
“We can’t say exactly where is he at the moment for security reasons.”
The release comes after nearly four months of wrangling over Lakhvi’s detention, after a judge granted him bail in December, sparking a furious response from New Delhi.
The government slapped Lakhvi with a series of detention orders but judges repeatedly cancelled them.
On Thursday the Lahore High Court ordered his release, conditional on a two million rupee ($20,000) bond.
India has long seethed at Pakistan’s failure either to hand over or prosecute those accused of planning and organising the violence.
Delhi accuses Islamabad of prevaricating over the trials, while Pakistan has claimed India failed to give it crucial evidence.
Lakhvi and six other suspects have been charged in Pakistan but their cases have made virtually no progress in more than five years.
The original bail order in December prompted an angry response from Indian PM Narendra Modi, who said it came as “a shock to all those who believe in humanity”.
Pakistan has long been accused of playing a “double game” with militants, supporting groups it thinks it can use for its own strategic ends, particularly in disputed Kashmir.
* Agence France-Presse
