Pompeo urges justice for victims of 2008 Mumbai attacks on anniversary
Pakistan has detained and released alleged mastermind Hafiz Saeed on and off for more than a decade
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday urged justice for the victims of the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, after Pakistan arrested the alleged mastermind of the bloodbath.
Addressing reporters on the 11th anniversary of the siege that killed more than 160 people, including six Americans, Pompeo said that the “brutality of the attack shocked the entire world.”
“It is an affront to the victims and their families that those who planned the Mumbai attacks have still not been convicted,” Pompeo said.
Pakistan in July arrested Hafiz Saeed, a firebrand cleric who heads the UN-designated terrorist group, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, shortly before Prime Minister Imran Khan visited the United States. Saeed has mostly lived freely in Pakistan since he was released by a Pakistani court in 2017, despite having been designated a terrorist by the US Justice Department. That move enraged India, which had demanded his prosecution. The United States also put a $10 million bounty on Saeed’s head. Pakistan has been detaining and releasing him off and on since the attack.
Last November, Pompeo urged Pakistan to take action against those responsible for the attacks
Saeed has denied involvement in the attack, which targeted emblematic sites of the Indian metropolis, including the Taj Hotel, as well as a Jewish center, leaving 166 people dead and hundreds injured. Among the dead were Chabad emissaries Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg, who were taken hostage and killed at the Mumbai Chabad House, along with four other Jewish visitors there.
The Holtzbergs’ son Moshe celebrated his bar mitzvah in New York this September. The boy became famous when a photo of him as a young child, clutched in the arms of his terrified-looking nanny running from the besieged Chabad House, was splashed on the front pages of newspapers around the world.