New Delhi: Pakistan has detained Sajid Mir, the alleged mastermind of the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, a report said.
The attack on multiple targets began in the Indian financial capital on 26 November, 2008 and was carried out by 10 terrorists, killing nearly 200 people, mostly Indians.
Pakistan has always refused to accept the presence of terrorists on its soil.
After the Mumbai terror attacks, Pakistan denied the attackers were Pakistani.
Once Ajmal Kasab was captured alive, Pakistan said he was not from the country till it was established that Kasab came from a small town called Faridkot in Okara district.
When Sajid Mir’s name first cropped up in relation to the attacks, Pakistan said nobody by that description existed. This, despite the fact that Mir had been convicted in absentia by a French court.
When international pressure intensified, particularly by the G-7’s anti money-laundering organisation FATF, Pakistan declared Sajid Mir had died.
But FATF was not convinced and demanded the country reveal its probe into the attacks before they discovered Sajid Mir was dead. It also wanted to know what information Pakistan had gathered about Mir. FATF continued to seek more clinching evidence in the Sajid Mir affair.
Incidentally, Mir is on the list of the United States’ domestic intelligence service the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In the US, he is wanted for “conspiracy to injure property of foreign government, providing material support to terrorists, killing a citizen outside the US, aiding and abetting, bombing of places of public use”.