Mumbai bombing suspect’s release raises many concerns
10-Jun-2009
Has South Asia really only brought us grief, Madhav? I don’t think that’s entirely fair, though I admit I’ve increasingly found myself asking that very same question while travelling through the southern mega city of Karachi last week.
In the markets and shops of Saddar Town, where almost anything imaginable can be found, the dusty facades of British-era townhouses are seen fading into history. Much like Pakistan since partition, the buildings have become increasingly dilapidated and neglected and, with them, so too much of our rich history.
‘There is no justice here’ is the most common phrase I hear in Pakistan, and I’ve been to every corner of this diverse, beautiful and sometimes brutal country. Indeed, much of the popular support for recently reinstated Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was a direct consequence of the incredible inequity faced by ordinary citizens.
Spare a thought, then, for the Lahore High Court which, last Tuesday, ordered the release of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, a religious leader placed under house arrest over alleged links to last November’s murderous Mumbai attacks. ‘His release has disturbed us all,’ said US Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, an understandable and widely held sentiment.
The court released Saeed on the grounds that government lawyers had not provided sufficient evidence to warrant his arrest. He has been released by the courts on similar grounds on at least two prior occasions, a record that has led the Indian government to conclude that Pakistani authorities are not doing their best to investigate Saeed.
The release order could not have come at a worse time for India-Pakistan relations. Already soured by events at Mumbai, it came a day after India’s minister for external affairs publicly advocated a thaw in the icy relations between the two countries, and a week after Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington spoke of the need to put the issue of mutual nuclear disarmament back on the table.
There are good reasons to presume Hafiz Mohammad Saeed’s involvement, at least vicariously, in the Mumbai attacks. He may not have helped organise the audacious assault that killed 173 people in one of the great cities of the subcontinent. But his stewardship of the anti-Indian Lashkar-e-Tayaba has for years been loud and active. Dossiers given to Pakistani officials by their Indian counterparts also shed considerable light on Lashkar’s involvement in Mumbai, as has tenacious investigative journalism, much of it by our own reporters.
But in a democracy, people deserve their day in court. If an individual is to be found guilty and sentenced to prison, their crimes must be established beyond a reasonable doubt, based on the evidence. The irony of this latest drama is that the Lahore High Court’s decision to order Saeed’s release proves its independence while, at the same time, exposing the executive’s incompetence.
Speaking of court cases, there has been intense scrutiny of the trial of Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman from Mumbai. How have the Indian courts been dealing with highly politicised cases like Kasab’s, Madhav?
(Article originally published at: http://www.the-diplomat.com/article.aspx?aeid=14389)