Pakistani authorities acting on a court order released a militant wanted by the US who allegedly founded a banned group linked to a 2008 attack in Mumbai, India, that killed 168 people, his spokesman and officials said.
Hafiz Saeed, who has been designated a terrorist by the US Department of Justice and has a US$10 million bounty on his head, was released before dawn after the court this week ended his detention in the eastern city of Lahore.
The move outraged Indian authorities, but Saeed’s spokesman, Yahya Mujahid, called his release a “victory of truth.”
“Hafiz Saeed was under house arrest on baseless allegations and jail officials came to his home last night and told him that he is now free,” Mujahid said.
Saeed ran Jamaat-ud-Dawa, widely believed to be a front for the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, which India believes was behind the deadly attack in Mumbai.
Pakistan has been detaining and freeing Saeed off and on since the attack, and he and four of his aides were put under house arrest in Lahore in January.
His release came after a three-judge panel dismissed a plea by the government to continue his house arrest, which ended on Thursday. His aides had been released earlier.
Saeed is known for publicly supporting militant groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, which is split between Pakistan and India and is claimed by both.
Many in the Indian-controlled portion favor independence or a merger with Pakistan, and violence has increased in Indian-controlled Kashmir in recent years.
In recent years Saeed often addressed protest rallies, asking the global community to pressure India to give the people in Kashmir the right of self-determination.
Saeed’s release angered neighboring India, which for years has asked Pakistan to take action against all those linked to the Mumbai attack. It is widely believed that Pakistan has long tolerated banned Lashkar-e-Taiba and other Muslim militant groups.
Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Raveesh Kumar in a statement expressed outrage that a “self-confessed and UN-proscribed terrorist was being allowed to walk free and continue with his evil agenda.”
“He was not only the mastermind, he was the prime organizer of the Mumbai terror attacks, in which many innocent Indians and many people from other nationalities were killed,” the statement said.
Saeed’s “release confirms once again the lack of seriousness on the part of Pakistani government in bringing to justice perpetrators of heinous acts of terrorism,” Kumar said.
India has said it has evidence that Saeed was involved in the Mumbai attack, but Islamabad has long said sufficient evidence is not available to charge him.
India has claimed that the attackers were in contact with people in Pakistan when the assault was underway.
Relations between Pakistan and India were strained after the attack on India’s financial hub.
Pakistan has often said that India is violating human rights in Kashmir, where security forces have killed or wounded dozens of protesters at anti-India rallies in recent months.
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