Confusion persists over suspects arrested in Mumbai attacks
It's unclear whether Pakistani officials took the alleged mastermind of the attacks, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, into custody during a raid Sunday.
Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan — Pakistani officials offered contradictory statements today as to whether an accused mastermind of the Mumbai attacks was among those arrested when Pakistani troops swooped down a day earlier on an alleged militant camp.
The confusion that persisted 24 hours after the raid took place underscored the extreme sensitivity of any Pakistani government action against militant groups and individuals implicated by Indian investigators in last month's shooting rampage in India's commercial and entertainment hub.
Part of that is due to enmity with India; part is due to the widespread sense in Pakistan that moving aggressively against Islamic insurgents has galvanized them to carry out suicide attacks at home, including the September truck bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad that killed more than 50 people.
Nearly two weeks after militants attacked the Indian city of Mumbai, killing more than 170 people, Pakistan's civilian government is under intense pressure from Washington officials and others to go after the suspected perpetrators. But Pakistani leaders fear a domestic backlash if the government moves forcefully against militant groups.
India and Western intelligence officials have cast strong suspicion on Lashkar-e-Taiba, or "Army of the Pure," and an affiliated group called Jamaat ud-Dawa, a self-described charitable and educational organization.
Sunday's army operation in the Pakistani-controlled slice of Kashmir, the Himalayan territory over which Pakistan and India have fought two wars, was not formally acknowledged by the Pakistani military until late today.
The terse statement did not address whether Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, a senior figure in Lashkar was in government custody, though it acknowledged an unspecified number of arrests. Local witnesses said troops sealed off the camp, which lies outside Pakistani Kashmir's capital, Muzaffarabad, and briefly battled those holed up inside.
Two senior Pakistani officials said early today they believed Lakhvi was arrested, but two others said later in the day that to their knowledge, Lakhvi was not one of more than a dozen militant suspects netted in the raid. All four officials spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the inflammatory nature of the issue.
