Foreign office spokesperson Abdul Basit says U.S. has no evidence against Lashkar leader
The United States' decision to offer a $10-million bounty on Lashkar-e-Taiba leader Hafiz Muhammad Saeed has led Pakistan to claim vindication of its long-standing position that there was insufficient evidence for it to prosecute the alleged 26/11 perpetrator.
“Look,” State Department spokesperson Mark Toner told journalists on Wednesday, “I think we're trying to, you know, get information that can be used to put this gentleman behind bars. There is information, there's intelligence that, you know, is not necessarily usable in a court of law.”
Limitations
Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said Mr. Toner's remarks made “clear that even the U.S. does not possess concrete evidence against Saeed.” Pakistan had taken a “principled and legal position.” “We should be mindful of each other's limitations,” Mr. Basit continued, “and understand that all such issues have to be addressed through a legal procedure.”
Bruce Reidel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who now works at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, offered a different perspective: the bounty “adds more fire to a relationship that can be called severely dysfunctional.” “The next time the Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence travels to Washington, the U.S. officials now have the obligation to raise this with them. I hope the administration has a plan for what happens when the Pakistanis say no.”
India has long claimed that it has provided enough evidence to the Pakistani authorities to initiate criminal proceedings against Saeed. Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram said the government had provided Pakistan with “more than enough material” to detain and interrogate Saeed for his role in 26/11.
“Pakistan's Interior Minister has the habit of saying every 15 days that there is not enough evidence,” Mr. Chidambaram said in 2009, soon after Islamabad first claimed India had provided insufficient material to justify prosecuting Mr. Saeed. “If the Pakistan government says that it can't investigate, why don't they let the FBI investigate who are willing to do it. If they can't investigate, allow us [India] to do the investigation.”
Earlier, the former National Security Adviser, M.K. Narayanan, said India had provided Pakistan with “Grade 1 evidence” in a series of dossiers. India had also provided Pakistan with recordings of several of Saeed's public speeches, arguing they violated Pakistan's own hate-speech laws.
Never charged
Pakistan has detained Saeed several times under public order regulations, but never charged him with a role in organising 26/11 or other terrorist attacks. Pakistan's Federal Investigations Agency says it has been unable to corroborate the testimonies of 26/11 attack team member Ajmal Kasab and Lashkar intelligence operative David Coleman Headley that Saeed had the overall control of their operations.
The FIA has also been unable to arrest several Lashkar and Inter-Services Intelligence operatives charged by India and the U.S.
The Jamaat-ud-Dawa, proscribed by the United Nations in 2008, remains active in Pakistan. Pakistan Ambassador to the United Nations Abdullah Haroon said in December 2008 that his country would “proscribe the JuD and take other consequential actions, as required, including the freezing of [its] assets.”
Keywords: Hafiz Saeed, Mumbai terror, 26/11 attacks, Ministry of External Affairs, U.S. Rewards for Justice Programme, U.S. bounty, Indo-Pak relations
Pakistan's attitude towards saeed itself is the proof that pakistan is not willing to do anything on its own. Same happened with the case of osama, pakistan continuously denied his exsistance in pakistan and remained dull. Pakistan should come forward to investigate the matter if pakistan is not allowing to do the investigation by other countries.
In Pakistan, India and now in the US this person is widely believed to have been the planner of the terrorist attack that killed 133 people in India and more attacks in Pakistan. It is also believed that the ISI, Pakistani intelligence operation, is behind him to promote its “strategic depth” defense policy. Under these circumstances no can or will dare to speak against him¸ certainly not in an open court, and hope to live. The political, police and judicial system in Pakistan is so weak, it cannot protect a witness against a strong criminal. That does not mean the criminal should go unpunished. Under similar circumstances, Pakistanis protected Bin Laden in secrecy, while at the same time protesting innocence. There could never be a court case against Bin Laden either for lack of witnesses who would dare to stand up. Fortunately justice was served– delayed but not denied. Now that the US has got involved the end won’t be long in coming for this operative.
Ever since the bounty of $10MN has been placed on Hafiz Saeed there are allegations and counter allegations. The USA says there is no 'usable' evidence against this man, Pakistan takes that as a vindication of its stand while India hails the move. Amidst this brewing confusion certain questions remain unanswered :
1) Is there any actionable evidence to anyone against this man at all?
2) What about the materials that India sent through a series of dossiers to Pakistan linking the JuD chief to Mumbai attack?
3) Are they sketchy as claimed by Pakistan or substantial?
4) Why can't the information that the UNSC relied upon to put this man and the organization he heads on the list of individuals and organizations associated with terrorism be used as evidence to proceed against him?
5) Is it not futile to expect Pakistan to gather evidence and go after him?
The bounty seems to be working to the extent that it has made Saeed apparently jittery but will anything beyond that be achieved?
Drones are going to smell this gentleman's a** and soon, you know the same fate of Mumbai dead will befall this man who preach hatred and violence and uses violent interpretation of Islam to realize and justify his evil objectives.
Neither good for Pak, India or US. Get rid of him. Our earth will be a less violent place if drones have their way.
The US looking for more evidence essentially vindicates Pakistan's stance on the issue. Either he is to be tried with credible, legal evidence (severely lacking) or be a free man with no "pending" investigation.
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