When David Headley, an American citizen of Pakistani origin, was arrested by the FBI, he revealed that the military commander-in-chief of Lashkar-e-Taiba was Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and that it was he who carried out the 26/11 attacks . in Bombay. 175 people died in the Mumbai attacks. David Headley was an agent of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
A Pakistani court had sentenced Lakhvi to prison. But now Lakhvi has come out and roams freely on the streets of Rawalpindi and Lahore. Lahore and Rawalpindi are among the cities where the Indian cricket team must go for the Champions Trophy.
Lakhvi has been included in the Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). That means he has been banned and declared a global terrorist. Lakhvi has since changed his name to Abu Wasi.
Dr Muhammad Saeed, assistant professor at the Department of Islamic Thought and Culture, National University of Modern Language (NUML), Islamabad, is seen openly supporting Lakhvi. They were both in some physical training program. A video is going viral on social media in which a bearded man is seen participating in a fitness test. This person claims to be Lakhvi.
India Today’s Open Source Investigation Team (OSINT) identified him through three facial recognition programs, confirming that the man is Lakhvi.
Also seen in these images is Dr. Zaid Haris, who calls himself an Islamic scholar. In the video, both Muhammad and Haris are seen singing praises of Lakhvi. This video was first seen on accounts supporting Lashkar-e-Taiba.
This fitness training event was organized by a person named Syed Muhammad. He has claimed on his social media that he was Mr. Pakistan. When contacted, Syed Muhammad stated that he did not know the identity of those who appeared for the fitness test. He claimed this was a “family event”, which took place in the early days of Covid. However, his statement turned out to be wrong.
In the video, Syed says, “I’ve never seen a 63-year-old man doing 210 reps in 18 or 19 minutes.” I have never seen anyone do this in my profession.
According to a US government document, Lakhvi was born on December 30, 1960. According to this, he will be about 63 years old in 2024, and not in the early days of Covid, as he had claimed. This shows that Syed’s claim that the video was old was wrong.
Both Muhammad and Harris have shared some images on social media, in which they are seen talking to Pakistani army officers. Dr Saeed’s profile on the NUML website shows that he had published an article in Humanities and Social Sciences Review, a Mumbai-based journal, in 2021.
After the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, the United Nations Security Council had included Lakhvi on the sanctions list. Many European countries, including the United States and India, have banned Lakhvi. US officials have confirmed that Lakhvi was associated with Al Qaeda and has been carrying out terrorist attacks abroad.
Intelligence sources said Lakhvi has houses in Rawalpindi, Lahore and Okara, where he roams freely. Terrorist commander Lakhvi was convicted by the Pakistani court in the terror financing case when the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was about to blacklist Pakistan. Sources told India Today that terrorist Lakhvi’s arrest was just a farce.
The Indian cricket team has not toured Pakistan since the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The ICC Champions Trophy will be held in Pakistan in 2025. The BCCI has expressed concerns about playing in Pakistan for security reasons. However, it is still unclear whether the Indian team will go to Pakistan or not.
