Daily Times

Pakistan on Sunday said that it is fully abiding its own statutes and fulfillment of international obligations in Mumbai case, which is stalled due to Indian reluctance to send witnesses.

“The investigations, prosecutions & subsequent convictions, through due process, are a reflection of effectiveness of Pakistan’s legal system, which operates independent of any extraneous factors or influences,” Foreign Office spokesperson said in a statement. He said legal process in the Mumbai case remained stalled due to reluctance by Indian side to send witnesses for cross-examination by Pakistani court. The statement came following a US State Department’s response on conviction of Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi saying that they were encouraged on the development; however his crime was ‘far beyond financing terrorism’. In a statement, the State Department had urged Pakistan to further hold him accountable for his involvement in terrorist attacks, including the Mumbai attacks.

Pakistan hit back at the United States State Department for suggesting Islamabad needed to do more to hold Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) leader Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi accountable, instead asking Washington to ‘reserve its concern’ for the financing and execution of terror activities by India. The FO stated that Pakistan was “fully abiding by its own statutes and fulfilment of its international obligations”. “The State Department is encouraged to reserve its concern for the active aiding, abetting, planning, promoting, financing & execution of terrorist activities by India for which sufficient irrefutable evidence has already been provided,” it added. A day earlier, the FO had also rejected a “malicious” statement issued by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) regarding Lakhvi’s conviction, saying it was ‘unfortunate’ that India was linking Pakistan’s due legal process with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) review.

On January 2, Lakhvi was arrested in Lahore in an intelligence-based operation. He was running a medical dispensary to collect and disburse funds for financing terrorism, a CTD spokesman had said, adding that a case of terrorism financing was registered. Last week, a Lahore ATC sentenced Lakhvi to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of Rs300,000. The court also directed law enforcement agencies to arrest the co-accused in the case, Abu Anas Mohsin, due to availability of sufficient evidence against him. The court also handed over possession of the dispensary to the state.

Meanwhile, the entire mainstream Indian media on January 9 used a doctored video clip of a former Pakistani diplomat, misquoting him that Indian airstrike had killed 300 people in Balakot. The leading Indian media outlets became a laughing stock by airing and publishing the fake news reports based on the clipped and doctored video of a panel discussion of ex-diplomat Zafar Hilaly, claiming that he admitted about the 300 Balakot casualties. The Indian media reports misquoting the TV news debate of Hilaly said, “India crossed the international border and did an act of war in which at least 300 were reported dead.” However, the video programme ‘Agenda Pakistan’ uploaded on YouTube clearly shows that the Indian media used the doctored video to serve its biased agenda against Pakistan. The topic of the debate was ‘By using the vocabulary of the enemy (in this context “surgical strike”), is Pakistan making its own case weak?’. Zafar Hilaly in a series of tweets himself confirmed that his statement was “cut, spliced and edited”. “The extraordinarily extent to which the Indian Govt has gone to cut, splice and edit the tape of my Hum TV appearance suggests their desperation to prove what they failed to do, namely, lend credence to Modi’s lies about Balacot and his farcical claims,” he said.