More than a month after the Lahore High Court release of Mr. Saeed, the Pakistan government’s sudden urgency for the appeal to be heard quickly may have to do with the upcoming India-Pakistan meetings in Sharm-al-Shaikh, where this can be presented as some progress against the alleged perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks.

The foreign secretaries of the two countries will meet first on the sidelines of the summit, and following this, the two Prime Ministers.

Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said on Monday that his meeting with his Pakistan counterpart Salman Bashir will deal entirely with finding out what action Pakistan had taken to prosecute and punish the Mumbai attack perpetrators.

The two officials will report back to their Prime Ministers, who will “take stock” at their meeting, and India may well decide that the appeals in the Supreme Court have cleared the air enough for renewed re-engagement.

How much progress will be made in the Supreme Court before Sharm-al-Shaikh, however, is uncertain. The petitions are both “leave to appeal” pleas, which means that if they are accepted, the government then has the task of filing the actual appeals.

In their petitions, both the federal and the provincial government argue that the Lahore High Court bench’s ruling amounted to challenging the jurisdiction of a three-judge review board appointed by its own chief justice, and that had twice extended Mr. Saeed’s original three-month house arrest.

Making the case that the Lahore High Court had erred in saying that there was no evidence to keep Mr. Saeed under preventive detention, the petitions also argue that preventive detention does not require evidence, and can be carried out on the basis of classified information.

The petitions also argue that the Lahore High Court underestimated the importance of the December 2008 UN Security Council designations against Mr. Saeed and the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the organisation that he currently heads. The JuD is a well-known charity front of the LeT.

A. K. Dogar, the lawyer for Mr. Saeed, said there was “ample law to support our case.” He said he was looking forward to the legal battle ahead as it would settle important constitutional issues surrounding the status of a detention review board, and would decide the law for future such cases.

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