Politics of the Mumbai attack trial eleven years later
On Nov. 26, 2008, India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, was struck by a series of terrorist attacks, killing 166 people. Of the nine attackers, only one, Ajmal Kasab, was caught alive, tried in India and hanged at Pune’s Yerwada prison in 2012.
India lost no time in blaming Pakistan, alleging that Islamabad had masterminded the attacks and that the proscribed Lashkar-e-Taiba was used to carry out the deadly job. On the basis of initial information received from India, Pakistan arrested seven people in early 2009. Their trial is still ongoing. India accuses Pakistan of perverting the course of justice, and refuses to engage in a dialogue process unless the trial is expedited and the accused are convicted.
As Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India between 2014 and 2017, wherever I would go in India, I was invariably reminded and asked about the status of the trial in Pakistan. My terse response would be that since the crime scene was Mumbai, we expected India to fully cooperate and strengthen our hands before the court of law.
At a seminar in New Delhi in August 2014, I said that Pakistan should not be expected to hang its citizens on the basis of weak and incomplete evidence just to please India. Not surprisingly, my remarks became headlines in India and were termed yet more proof of Pakistan’s continuing reluctance to proceed beyond ‘cosmetic measures to hoodwink the world.’
Be that as it may, some facts cannot be denied. India took inexplicably long to allow a Judicial Commission from Pakistan to visit India in September 2013, which was four years after the attacks and three years after the request was made. It was also a full year after Ajmal Kasab was hanged. It is still a mystery why India behaved in undue haste to execute Kasab.
If India was convinced of its allegations, it should have allowed Kasab to be cross-examined by Pakistan’s Judicial Commission. It should have also acceded to Pakistan’s request for consular access to Zabiullah Ansari, an alleged Indian operative of the Mumbai attackers.
While it bears repetition, it is important to highlight that the Mumbai trial is well-nigh impossible to proceed with, without India’s full cooperation, which must move beyond rhetoric for its public’s consumption.
Abdul Basit
Meanwhile, India should have provided the statement of the Indian Magistrate who recorded Kasab’s statement, which it did not.
It is also intriguing that whereas India tries to put diplomatic pressure on Pakistan for the early conclusion of the Mumbai trial, its own actions are of little help in the matter. For instance, Pakistan had written a formal letter to India in Sept. 2015, seeking clarification on some issues and the provision of specific articles allegedly used in the attack. India took exactly one year to respond to that letter in September 2016, and that, too, by suggesting typical bureaucratic measures which had only served to cause further delays.
Similarly, Pakistan had also agreed under the July 10, 2015 Ufa Joint Statement to have separate talks with India on terrorism. But when Pakistan’s then National Security Advisor was to visit New Delhi, he was disinvited because he had also sought to meet the Kashmiri leadership, as was historic practice.
On the other hand, Pakistan has gone out of its way to accommodate India’s demands. Despite my advice to the contrary, the then leadership of Pakistan’s Foreign Office agreed to sign a joint statement with India in December 2015, giving unilateral assurances to expedite the Mumbai trial. India’s late External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, was visibly upset at my frequent interventions during the negotiations.
While it bears repetition, it is important to highlight that the Mumbai trial is well-nigh impossible to proceed with, without India’s full cooperation, which must move beyond rhetoric for its public’s consumption. India must provide all the material evidence and requisite depositions that can stand the scrutiny of the applicable law in Pakistan.
From Pakistan’s perspective, this trial cannot go on forever. Those who have been accused of the crime cannot stay in jail indefinitely in the absence of sufficient and concrete evidence from India. Nor should they be executed to please that country, which has in any case, made apparent it is not interested in burying the hatchet. Stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its special legal status in August, is a case in point.
The international community should be wary of India’s continuing accusations against Pakistan regarding terrorism, because this distracts the world and excuses Delhi from having meaningful talks on Kashmir. To fulfil exactly this purpose, it will not be surprising if the Mumbai trial continues to drag on for many more years to come.
– Abdul Basit is the president of Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies. He was previously Pakistan's ambassador to Germany and Pakistan's High Commissioner to India.
