WASHINGTON: Disappointed over Pakistan’s slow pace of trial in Mumbai terror attack case, a top American lawmaker has demanded that the seven suspects, including LeT operational commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, be handed over to the International Criminal Court to bring them to justice.
“There are seven individuals that need to be brought to justice (for their role in the 26/ 11 attack case),” said Congressman Ed Royce, chairman of the powerful House Foreign Relations Committee. “If Pakistan cannot try them, turn them over to international criminal court for crimes against humanity, for what they did in their collusion, in their culpability for what happened,” he said on Thursday. The seven Pakistani suspects have been charged with planning, financing and executing the attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai in November 2008. A Rawalpindi-based antiterrorism court had been handling the case since 2009 though the judge has been changed five times. Addressing a select group of Indian-Americans at a Congressional reception at the Capitol Hill organized by the American India Public Affairs Committee, Royce said both India and the United States are facing challenges from terrorism. Royce said some $100 million has been traced going from the Gulf States to Pakistan’s 600 Deobandi schools; which, according to him, are factories of radicalism. (Agencies)
“Ethnic cleansing is going out in Pakistan today those who are speaking against it,” he said, alleging that the population of Hindus in Pakistan has now dropped to 1.5%, against 25% at the time of independence. (Agencies)
