Seven Pakistanis accused of being behind last year’s murderous attacks in Mumbai in which 165 people died appeared in court for the first time Wednesday in Rawalpindi. They included the alleged mastermind of the crime, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, head of the banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
A very great deal hangs on the outcome of this trial in a special anti-terrorist court set up inside the high security Adiala prison. India’s rage at the attacks was the more real because of the lamentable failure of its own security apparatus. The government in Islamabad did not help matters by immediately rejecting claims that the terrorists had come from Pakistan and denying that the one surviving attacker Muhammed Ajmal Qasab was a Pakistani citizen.
Therefore the immediate outcome of the Mumbai atrocity was exactly what the terrorists wanted — a suspension of the already long drawn-out peace process between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. Wiser counsels eventually prevailed in Pakistan and the truth was admitted. Better still, acting on information supplied by the Indian authorities, including a confession from Qasab who said that the four of Wednesday’s accused, including Lakhvi, had seen him and his nine fellow terrorists off in a boat from Karachi, the Pakistani police made seven arrests. An attempt to detain the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hafiz Saeed failed when the courts said there was no evidence against him.
New Delhi has been critical of the speed with which the prosecutions have been mounted. They have also accused 15 other Pakistanis of being involved but these people have not yet been detained. Defense lawyers are likely to argue that Qasab’s key evidence was extracted under duress. Even though this seems not to be the case and that hatefully Qasab is proud to claim his part in the ruthless bloodletting, lawyers will also probably argue that since the witness will not be available for cross-examination, his testimony should be discarded.
This highlights the difficulty of effectively prosecuting this single crime in two different countries. Yet India would have been no more prepared to see Qasab tried in a neutral venue than Pakistanis would have accepted the extradition of seven of their nationals to face trial in India or elsewhere.
Passions are still high on both sides of the border. In Pakistan in particular there is an excessive readiness to believe all sorts of absurd conspiracy theories. Not only this but Pakistan is still locked in a life-and-death struggle with its tribal insurgents and their Al-Qaeda allies. Given the recent appalling security failures by the police and army, it seems horribly inevitable that either insurgents or Lashkar-e-Taiba elements will seek to attack the Rawalpindi trial or those connected with it.
Yet for all the tension and suspicions on both sides, there is one overarching issue at stake here. A group of gunmen perpetrated a truly heinous crime during which they showed no mercy even to pregnant women and children. No civilized society can countenance such barbarity and not seek justice for the victims.
