MULTAN, Pakistan (AP) – Pakistani security forces on Saturday arrested a suspected militant group behind the 2008 bloody attacks in India in Mumbai.
A Pakistani anti-terrorism police official, Shakil Ahmed, said the cost of terrorism in the eastern city of Lahore had been seized from Zaikur Rehman Lakhvi.
Lakhvi is said to be a leader of the Lashker-e-Taiba group that staged the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people were killed. Lakhvi was detained in Mumbai days after the attacks, but was released by Pakistani courts in 2015.
Pakitani authorities claim that Lakhvi runs a pharmacy in Lahore as a front for financing militant activities.
Lakhvi was a prominent figure in Hafiz Saeed’s charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which is believed to be a front for Lashker-e-Taiba.
Saeed, who has been named a terrorist by the US Department of Justice and has a sum of $ 10 million on his head, is currently serving several prison sentences in Pakistan after being convicted in several cases in recent months. The Pakistani government has seized Saeed’s extensive network of mosques, schools, seminaries and charities and other assets in the country.
Relations between Pakistan and India were strained after the attack on India’s financial center in 2008. The rival South Asian powers have waged two wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.