Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed is the subject of an investigation by Pakistani authorities, but he will not be arrested till there is evidence against him, interior minister Rehman Malik said today.
"We will not arrest him (Saeed) until we get evidence. I am not saying whether we have or don’t have something (against him), it is a matter of investigation," Malik told reporters at the Islamabad Press Club.
"Hafiz Saeed is being investigated. If we get something, we will definitely arrest him, but not on someone’s say so," Malik said in response to a question on India’s demand for Saeed’s arrest for alleged involvement in planning and executing the Mumbai attacks.
Malik also made it clear that Pakistani authorities would not arrest Saeed only because Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone terrorist captured during the Mumbai attacks, had given a statement against the JuD chief.
"Give us the evidence. If we could arrest (Lashker-e-Taiba operations commander Zakiur Rehman) Lakhvi as the mastermind of (the Mumbai attack), we can also arrest him (Saeed)," he said.
Saeed was placed under house arrest in December last year after the UN security council imposed restrictions on the JuD and its leaders in the wake of the Mumbai attacks that killed nearly 180 people.
He was freed on the orders of the Lahore high court earlier this year. Malik had claimed last year that the government had banned the JuD, but it subsequently emerged during court hearings that no formal notification was ever issued to proscribe the group.
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