A day after the Pakistani government lifted a moratorium on the death penalty in terrorism-related cases, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, a military commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba, was let off on bail by a special anti-terror court.
Lakhvi, a senior member of the Lashkar hierarchy, was second only to Mumbai terrorist attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed.
He was arrested in December 2008 soon after the serial attacks that rocked Mumbai on November 26, 2008.
Lakhvi and six others had filed bail applications on Wednesday even as lawyers were on strike condemning the terrorist attack on an army-run school in Peshawar that left 148 people, mostly children, dead.
Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency prosecutor disagreed with the bail request, but advocate Rizwan Abbasi, the lawyer representing Lakhvi, stood before the court as the bail was granted, Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported.
The seven accused – Lakhvi, Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hamad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Younis Anjum – are awaiting trial at Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi.
Lakhvi’s lawyer told reporters in Islamabad his client was given bail due to a lack of evidence even though Ajmal Kasab, one of the ten Mumbai attack terrorists, and conspirators, David Coleman Headley and Abu Jundal, gave graphic details of Lakhvi’s role.
Lakhvi, according to Kasab – who was hanged after being convicted for the 26/11 attack – was the main trainer who supervised target practice and underwater training.
He was also the financier and main plotter who sat in the terror control room in Karachi directing the terrorists’ activities during the three days Mumbai was under siege.
One of the key pieces of evidence came after Abu Jundal – also present in the control room – was brought to India from Saudi Arabia. Jundal recognised and identified Lakhvi’s voice on the terror tapes for the National Investigation Agency (NIA) team that interrogated him.
Headley, a Pakistan-born American terrorist, who visited Mumbai several times to film different targets described Lakhvi as “the main architect of 26/11” to a team of NIA officers, who were given access to him in Chicago.
In a damaging disclosure, Headley revealed that the then ISI chief, Lt Gen Shuja Pasha, had visited Lakhvi in Adiala jail.
The American government has also shared intelligence with India that Lakhvi had access to a mobile phone in jail and continued to run Lashkar’s operations from prison.
Two years ago, investigative online journal ProPublica reported that the then Pakistan army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani had declined to confiscate Lakhvi’s phone.
Lakhvi’s importance to the Pakistani establishment can also be judged from the fact that the military commander was being guarded by Lashkar-e-Taiba soldiers even though he was being housed in a high-security jail where the terror trial was being conducted.
For six years now, Pakistan has refused to share Lakhvi’s voice samples, needed to confirm that he controlled the Mumbai attacks from a control room that had been set up in Karachi.
Lakhvi’s bail on grounds that the evidence was not enough has been regarded by observers as a major setback to the trial.
