Pakistan Raids Camp of Mumbai Plotter

Pakistani forces raided a camp used by the group whom India blames for last month’s massacre in Mumbai and arrested an alleged mastermind of the attacks that shook India’s financial capital.

The troops grabbed Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi who is among the 12 people taken Sunday in the raid on the riverbank camp. Said camp was run by the banned group Laskhar-e-Taiba. There was a brief gunfight in the camp near Muzaffarabad before the militants were subdued, the officials said. He said Lakhvi was named by the Mumbai gunman as a mastermind of the attacks.

Indian officials said  that the sole Mumbai attacker captured alive has told them that Lakhvi recruited him for the mission and that Lakhvi and another militant, Yusuf Muzammil, planned the operation. The three-day seige of India’s commercial capital left 171 people dead.

It was not immediately clear what Pakistan intended to do with Lakhvi.Pakistan and India do not have an extradition treaty. Last week, President Asif Ali Zardari indicated anyone arrested in Pakistan in connection with the attacks would be tried in Pakistan.

~ by topofthenews on December 8, 2008.