New Delhi: India wants Pakistan to freeze the assets of fugitive mafia don Dawood Ibrahim, Hafiz Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, who are accused of masterminding the Mumbai terror attack in 2008.
Indian government’s case is made stronger by sanctions on all three by the United Nations Security Council’s al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctions committee for being key conspirators in the attacks. However, it is unlikely that Pakistan will follow suit, because it denies that Ibrahim is living in the country.
“As a U.N. member state, it is the responsibility of Pakistan to freeze their assets. We are planning to send a formal communication to Pakistan to let us know whether assets of the three terrorists were seized and if not will ask it to freeze them immediately,” a government official said.
The committee, established pursuant to U.N. Security Council resolution 1267 (1999), is a UNSC subsidiary organ that oversees the implementation by member states of the three sanctions measures — assets freeze, travel ban, and arms embargo — imposed against targeted individuals and entities associated with al Qaeda and the Taliban.
India has said that Ibrahim, key accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, is in Pakistan, though Islamabad denies it. Saeed roams freely in Pakistan as does Lakhvi, after being set free from a Rawalpindi jail in April 2015.
