Pakistan's Lashkar Arrests Met With Indian Mistrust

[tekisui]

http://in.reuters.com/article/topNews/idINIndia-36961520081210?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0">Pakistan's Lashkar arrests met with Indian mistrust

By Simon Cameron-Moore

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan confirmed on Wednesday the arrest of two men named by India as planners of the militant attack on Mumbai, but a senior Indian official described Pakistani actions so far as "eyewash".

Two operations commanders with the Lashkar-e-Taiba jihadi group, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Zarrar Shah were being held, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told journalists in Multan city.

"They have been detained for investigation," he said, providing the first official confirmation since Lakhvi's arrest in a raid on a Lashkar camp in Pakistani Kashmir on Sunday.

(snip)

While other media have reported up to 40 people had been arrested, Pakistani intelligence officials told Reuters only around a dozen people have been detained, mostly in the raid on a camp outside Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir.

Pakistan military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said an operation against banned militant organisations remained underway, and was being carried out in several places.

(snip)

Scepticism abounds in India over the sincerity of Pakistan's actions because of alleged past ties between the Pakistani military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency and groups like Lashkar and Jaish that had fought Indian rule in Kashmir.

"This is an eyewash. We want action that meets our concern," a senior Indian government official, who asked to remain anonymous, told Reuters.

"There is no modicum of doubt about the complicity of elements of Pakistan, including the ISI," the official said.

(snip)

Having interrogated one gunman caught alive, Indian police have released names and photographs of the nine shot dead in the three-day assault, and revealed where they came from in Pakistan.

They were part of a group of 30 trained for suicide missions, a top police officer said.

"The other 20 were trained to carry out other missions. They did not come to India, they must have gone elsewhere," Deven Bharti, a deputy police commissioner, told Reuters on Wednesday.

Investigations into possible links with home-grown Indian Islamist militants have focused on five suspects.

more...