Pakistan won't hand suspects to India

9 Dec 2008, 6:12 pm   -   Source: AFP
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Special Armed Force officials stand guard on red road where Indian Muslims gathered for praying during Eid al-Adha festival in Eastern Indian city of Calcutta. (AAP)

Special Armed Force officials stand guard on red road where Indian Muslims gathered for praying during Eid al-Adha festival in Eastern Indian city of Calcutta. (AAP)

Pakistan said it would not hand over any suspects in the Mumbai bombings to India, after authorities arrested 15 people in a raid on an Islamic charity linked to a banned militant group. 

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Pakistan said it would not hand over any suspects in the Mumbai bombings to India, after authorities arrested 15 people in a raid on an Islamic charity linked to a banned militant group.

India has repeatedly said that the hardline Lashkar-e-Taiba organisation was behind last month's carnage in Mumbai, which saw attackers go on a grenade and gun spree in the city that left 172 people dead and more than 300 wounded.
   
With tensions rising between the nuclear-armed neighbours over the bloodshed, India had demanded that Pakistan hand over militant suspects -- but Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said that was out of the question.
   
"The arrests are being made for our own investigations. Even if allegations are proved against any suspect, he will not be handed over to India," the minister said. "We will proceed against those arrested under Pakistani laws."
   
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain and nearly came to a fourth in 2001 after an attack on the Indian parliament that was blamed on Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which means Army of the Pious.
   
Under international pressure to act, Pakistan on Sunday raided a  camp run by a charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, that many believe has close links to Lashkar-e-Taiba, and arrested 15 people.

The charity is headed by LeT's founder Hafiz Saeed.

The LeT has been banned by Pakistan, but India accuses Islamabad of not cracking down on the group, which was established to fight Indian rule in Kashmir and has past links to Pakistani intelligence services and al-Qaeda.
   
Saeed on Monday condemned the arrests, saying the Pakistan government had shown "weakness by targeting Kashmiri
organisations".

Two of the three India-Pakistan wars were fought over disputed Kashmir, which is controlled in part but claimed in whole by both nations, and the United States in particular has urged calm after the bloodshed in Mumbai.
   
Qureshi, the Pakistan foreign minister, said on Tuesday that his country did not want war but was prepared to defend itself if necessary.

"We do not want to impose war, but we are fully prepared in case war is imposed on us. We are not oblivious to our responsibilities to defend our homeland. But it is our desire that there should be no war," he said.
   
Pakistan authorities were meanwhile said to be questioning a 16th man, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, who was arrested on Saturday.

 

Indian media say the lone surviving attacker named him as a key planner behind the Mumbai attacks.
   
India has said that all 10 of the gunmen who carried out the brazen assault on Mumbai, the country's financial capital, were from Pakistan.

The attackers, some of whom arrived by boat, targeted two luxury hotels, a hospital, a Jewish centre and other sites.

They managed to hold off Indian security forces for 60 hours before nine were killed and one was captured.

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