Pakistan’s security forces have arrested a suspected leader of the militant group behind the bloody 2008 Mumbai attacks in India.
Zaikur Rehman Lakhvi was seized in the eastern city of Lahore on terrorism financing charges, a Pakistani counter-terror officer said.
Lakhvi is alleged to be a leader of the Lashker-e-Taiba group that organized the Mumbai attacks in 2008 that killed 166 people.
He 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 US justice department and has a 10 million dollar 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.
