Angry Lakhvi threatens to expose Saeed

Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, chief operations commander of the banned Lashkar-e-Tayiba arrested by the Pakistani authorities for alleged involvement in the Mumbai terror attacks, is furious at the Mohammad Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaat-ud-Daawa’s announcement disowning him.

Lakhvi has threatened to expose those in the Jamaat and their spy masters, who he says have abandoned him.

According to diplomatic sources in Islamabad, who have been working in tandem with the Inter-Services Intelligence and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to hunt down those who planned the Mumbai attacks, Lakhvi is upset by a statement by Jamaat spokesman Abdullah Muntazir that he and another arrested Lashkar leader, Zarar Shah, never had any links with Saeed or the Jamaat. Saeed, he said, was in police custody in Lahore.

In a bid to shield Saeed, the Jamaat spokesman had said on January 9, “In any case, Lakhvi and Shah, the two men India is talking about, were never associated with the Jamaat, which has been into charity work only. This had been conveyed by Hafiz Mohammad Saeed after the Mumbai attacks, adding that there were elements in the Pakistan government which wanted to target religious organisations.”

But the sources say Lakhvi has told interrogators that Muntazir’s statement was the biggest joke of 2009. He said the LeT and the Jamaat are one and the same and Muntazir was acting as LeT spokesman by presenting himself as ‘Abdullah Ghaznavi from Srinagar’.

The sources say that Lakhvi, who was the real force behind Saeed, has conceded to interrogators that the terror attacks were coordinated and planned with the full involvement of the Jamaat leadership.

He said Mun-tazir coordinated between him and Saeed to plan the Mumbai operation. The coordination was needed as Lakhvi was based in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir while Saeed was based in Lahore.

But sources close to Saeed’s inner circle said Lakhvi comes from Chika 18L of Rinala Khurd in Okara, the south Punjab district from where Mohammad Ajmal Amir, the sole terrorist to be captured alive in Mumbai during the 26/11 attacks, grew up.

They denied media reports that Lakhvi had once revolted against Saeed over the distribution of Jamaat and LeT assets and threatened to kill him, saying the two hardly knew each other.

Lakhvi is learnt to have told his interrogators that he was doing whatever his handlers wanted him to do, and he would expose all in the Jamaat and in the Pakistan establishment, if he were handed over to the Indian authorities.