Pakistan Arrests Terror Suspect as Khan Prepares to Meet Trump

(Bloomberg) -- Pakistan arrested Hafiz Saeed, the suspected planner of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, on terrorism-related charges days before Prime Minister Imran Khan meets U.S. President Donald Trump.

Saeed, who heads the proscribed Jamaat-ud-Dawa group, was shifted to jail by the counter-terrorism police in Lahore, group’s spokesman Nadeem Awan said by phone. Saeed, who has been arrested and released many times in the past and has lived freely in Lahore, faces as many as 16 criminal and terrorism-related cases, he said. Saeed has denied the charges.

Pakistan, which secured a $6 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund this month, is taking steps to avoid being blacklisted by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, a global anti-money laundering agency. The South Asian nation has long been warned by the world powers including the U.S. to curb groups linked to global terrorism.

Khan is scheduled to meet Trump on July 22, his first meeting with the U.S. president since coming to power about a year ago.

In a tweet on Wednesday, Trump said, “After a ten year search, the so-called ‘mastermind’ of the Mumbai Terror attacks has been arrested in Pakistan. Great pressure has been exerted over the last two years to find him!”

Citing Trump’s remark on a 10-year search for someone who has lived openly and been freed from custody repeatedly, Joshua White, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said in an email that the “error-filled tweet merely confirms that Pakistan sought to use the arrest to lay the groundwork for a productive meeting between the two leaders.”

White said he expects the visit to focus mostly on Afghanistan and support the U.S. would need from Pakistan “to advance meaningful peace talks with the Taliban.”

Pakistan needed the IMF money so “you can say the American pressure has been there” forcing Pakistan to arrest Saeed, Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Lahore-based political analyst, said. Only time will tell whether Saeed’s arrest is an“eyewash.” Pakistan also needs weapons from the U.S., he said.

Jamaat’s Awan said the group’s deputy chief Abdur Rehman Makki and many other party supporters were arrested months ago under similar charges and that they are seeking a legal course.

To contact the reporters on this story: Kamran Haider in Islamabad at khaider2@bloomberg.net;Ismail Dilawar in Karachi at mdilawar@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Arijit Ghosh at aghosh@bloomberg.net, Khalid Qayum, Larry Liebert

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