ISLAMABAD - A government prosecutor said Friday he will challenge a court order granting bail to the alleged mastermind of the 2008 attacks in Mumbai.
A judge in an Islamabad anti-terror court granted Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi bail on Thursday. “I am completing all the legal formalities and then I will challenge this order in Islamabad on Monday,” government prosecutor Mohammad Azhar Chaudhry told AFP. Lakhvi remained in the high security Adyala prison in Rawalpindi even after Thursday’s court ruling.
“Today I am trying to get a copy of the written (bail) order and then I will file an appeal in Islamabad high court,” Chaudhry said. In Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told parliament “Bail to LeT commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi has come as a shock to all those who believe in humanity worldover.” India’s foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin complained the case against the suspects was moving at a “glacial pace”.
Commenting before the announcement of the appeal, Akbaruddin said the bail order had “taken this saga to another level”.
A Pakistani government official insisted the appeal was not lodged because of the Indian process, and said the trial would go at its own speed.
“It’s going on and legal processes have their own schedule and pace because witnesses have to come. The trial will take place as soon as it possibly can,” he said.
INP adds: The authorities again detained Lakhvi under Maintenance of Public Order on Friday. The court’s ruling on Thursday came a day after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to crack down on terror groups in Pakistan, after a Taliban massacre killed 148 people, mostly teenagers, at a school. Sharif on Wednesday announced that a six-year moratorium on the death penalty would be lifted for those convicted of terror offences. Pakistan and India both control part of Kashmir but claim the whole of the territory and have fought two of their three wars over it since independence from Britain in 1947.