26/11 mastermind LeT commander sentenced to 15 years imprisonment by Pakistan court

Lakhvi and the group are accused by India and the United States of being behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks – though the charges or sentence are not related to any specific incident.

Lahore: Mumbai attack mastermind and Lashkar-e-Taiba operations commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment by a Pakistani anti-terrorism court in Lahore in a terror financing case on Friday.

Lakhvi and the group are accused by India and the United States of being behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks – though the charges or sentence are not related to any specific incident.

UN proscribed terrorist Lakhvi, 61, who was on bail since 2015 in the Mumbai attack case, was arrested by the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab province on Saturday.

"The Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) Lahore convicted Lakhvi for commission of offences of terrorism financing in a case registered by the CTD for 15 years under different section of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997," a court official told PTI after the hearing.

Judge Ejaz Ahmad Buttar sentenced Lakhvi to five years of rigorous imprisonment each on three counts with a fine of PKR 100,000 each on three counts. "In default of payment of fine, he will have to undergo an imprisonment of six months each on three counts. He has been sent to prison to serve the sentences," the official said.

Lakhvi pleaded before the court that he was "falsely implicated" in this case.

India has long called on Pakistan to try Lakhvi for the Mumbai attack, in which over 160 people were killed, but Islamabad has said that Delhi has not given it concrete evidence that it can use in a court to try the LeT leader, which it had initially arrested in 2008 but was later released on bail.

He was arrested again on charges of terrorism financing on Saturday. The United States welcomed his arrest but called for him to be tried for the Mumbai attacks, too.