Arrest of 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed is an eyewash: Mirza slams Pakistan 

Speaking on his online channel “The Hot Issue”, the activist was quoted as saying by ANI, “This is not the first time that he has been arrested in Pakistan. Each time when the global pressure on Pakistan increases, Pakistan puts such people in prison which is like a 5-star hotel treatment and then they wait for the world opinion to wither away and they free them again.”  

 “Pakistan gives these fugitives sanctuary because the military and ISI agency give them protection as they use them as their proxies against India," he said.

He said Pakistan should hand over the arrested terrorists to India if they want to get rid of the militant.

“I think this arrest of Hafiz Saeed is just an eyewash. If Pakistan is sincere in getting rid of its terrorists then it should hand them over to India. It should also stop the cross-border firing from the LoC which is causing havoc on the border areas because people living in the villages are targeted unnecessarily,” Mirza said, who is from Mirpur in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir and is living in exile in the UK.

“Pakistan thrives on communal politics. By hating the other community, they create their own identity because in itself Pakistan has no identity whatsoever apart from being a so-called Islamic state carved out of the Indian subcontinent as a homeland for Muslims,” he said.  

A Pakistan court here on Thursday sentenced "global terrorist" Hafiz Saeed to 10 years of imprisonment for his involvement in an illegal funding case, media reports said.

The judgement was passed by an Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC).

Saeed, the chief of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) which is a front organisation of terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), has also been fined Rs. 1,10,000 by the court.

The ATC has ordered the confiscation of his properties.

His two aides- Zafar Iqbal and Yahya Mujahid- have been sentenced to ten-and-a-half years of imprisonment each while his brother-in-law Abdul Rehman Makki has been sentenced to a six-month jail term.

Saeed, the mastermind of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, and his aides were in February this year sentenced to 11 years of imprisonment for terror financing.

The JuD chief was arrested in Pakistan in July, 2019 on charge of terror financing following the build up of an international pressure on Pakistan.

Saeed, who is recognised as the "global terrorist" by the United Nations and the US, led the Mumbai attack in India in 2008 killing 166 people and injured hundreds more.