ATC Grants Bail to Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi MUMBAI ATTACK MASTERMIND

ZAKI-UR-REHMAN LAKHVI HAD BEEN IN CUSTODY FOR OVER FIVE YEARS.

An anti-terror court in Pakistan on Thursday granted bail to Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the man accused of masterminding the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, lawyers told AFP.

The 60-hour siege on India’s economic capital left 166 people dead and was blamed on the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Relations between the two rivals worsened dramatically after the carnage in Mumbai, in which 10 gunmen attacked luxury hotels, a popular cafe, a train station and a Jewish center.

Pakistan has had five Mumbai suspects in custody for more than five years and the failure to advance their trials has been a source of particular irritation in perennially frosty ties with India. “We had moved a bail application with the Islamabad anti-terror court on Dec. 10, today the judge granted bail to my client after hearing arguments from both sides,” said Lakhvi’s lawyer Rizwan Abbasi.

Prosecutor Mohammad Chaudhry Azhar confirmed the court had granted bail.

The court’s decision comes a day after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to crack down on terror groups in Pakistan, after Taliban gunmen massacred 148 people at a school in Peshawar.