Lahore: The Lahore High Court has allowed Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed to enlist the Pakistan Foreign Ministry as a respondent to his petition seeking directions for the government to defend him before a US court in connection with the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
Saeed, his operational commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, his predecessor Lt Gen (r) Nadeem Taj, ISI officials Major Sameer Ali and Major Iqbal are among those who have been summoned for appearing before the American court in a case filed by an injured US citizen and the heirs of four others, who were killed in the terror strike on November 26, 2008.
During the court proceedings, Deputy Attorney General Nasim Kashmiri said that Saeed’s case fell in the domain of the Foreign Ministry, which had not been made a party to the case.
He said the petitioner had wrongly put the Defence Ministry and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the respondent memo, while they had no relevance to the matter, a newspaper Nation reports.
The DAG said that the subject matter was not related to the Defence Ministry and the ISI, which might be the reason that the agency had not furnished any reply in this regard so far.
The DAG also said that the ISI, being a fully independent national institution, could not be compelled to give reply about a sensitive matter like that of Hafiz Saeed’s.
The court, giving time to the petitioner to file new respondent memo in this regard, directed the LHC office to issue notice to the Foreign Ministry for replying on the matter immediately after receiving the petitioner’s application for including the ministry in the respondent memo.
ANI
ANI
