On the 12th anniversary of 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, an anti-terrorism organisation in Bangladesh on Thursday formed a human chain in protest against Pakistan’s role in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2004 grenade attack in Dhaka.
Participants in the human chain programme said terrorism would never be accepted on the soil of Bangladesh, adding that terrorism had no religion. Thousands of people participated in the human chain event in an effort to build a terrorism-free Bangladesh and protect human rights in the country.
On November 26, 2008, ten terrorists trained by the Pakistan-based terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) carried out a series of coordinated attacks against multiple targets in Mumbai including the Taj Mahal hotel, the Oberoi hotel, the Leopold Cafe, the Nariman (Chabad) House, and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus train station, killing 166 people.
Nine terrorists were killed and the lone survivor, Ajmal Amir Kasab, was caught and was sentenced to death at Yerwada Central Jail in Pune in 2012. On November 11, 2012, Kasab was hanged in Yerawada Jail in Pune.
According to media reports, the Pakistani government is punishing Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind behind the Mumbai attacks, and his gang for money laundering and financing terrorists under the guise of domestic politics, yet Pakistan continues to protect the conspirators in the Mumbai attacks.
Pakistani authorities continue to deny culpability and are yet to take action on the multiple dossiers shared by India. A trial underway in a Pakistani anti-terrorism court against seven suspects has made little headway in more than a decade, as Pakistani officials serially question the sufficiency and legitimacy of evidence against them.
A Lahore anti-terrorism court recently sentenced Saeed to 10-year imprisonment in two terror-financing cases, yet according to sources, the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) officials are treating Saeed as a VIP.
Pakistan has been placed on the FATF’s grey list of the country with inadequate controls over terrorism financing in 2018 saying Pakistan “still needs to demonstrate that law enforcement agencies are identifying and investigating the widest range of terrorism financing activity.”