Pakistan arrests key militant on terror financing charges

MULTAN, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan’s security forces arrested Saturday an alleged leader of the militant group that was behind the bloody 2008 Mumbai attacks in India.

An official with the Pakistani counterterrorism police, Shakil Ahmed, said that Zaikur Rehman Lakhvi was seized in the eastern city of Lahore, on terrorism financing charges.

Lakhvi is alleged to be a leader of the Lashker-e-Taiba group that organized the Mumbai attacks in 2008 that killed 166 people. Lakhvi was detained days after the Mumbai attacks but released in 2015 by Pakistani courts.

Pakitani authorities allege that Lakhvi was running a dispensary 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 designated a terrorist by the U.S. Justice Department and has a $10 million bounty on his head, is presently serving multiple jail terms 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 hub in 2008. The rival South Asian powers have fought two wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.