Pakistani court orders militant leader released

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Pakistani court has ordered the full release of Hafiz Saeed, founder of the Islamic militant group that carried out the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks, 10 months after the government placed him under house arrest, his lawyer said.

The move will free Saeed to participate more directly in Pakistan’s politics. And at a time when the United States has been pushing Pakistan to do better in curbing militants, it presents another example of how the most extremist voices in the country seem to be moving more into the mainstream.

Saeed had long been one of the most-wanted militant leaders in the region, but he had been living in the open in Pakistan for years despite a $10 million U.S. bounty on him. India, in particular, has criticized Pakistan for not bringing him to justice after the militant group he founded, Lashkar-e-Taiba, killed 166 people in the Mumbai attacks.

But to many Pakistanis, Saeed is a hero: the architect of a long militant campaign to fight India in Kashmir, and a prominent voice for fundamentalist Islam. Some love how he has mocked efforts by the United States to capture him, and he drew large crowds as he continued to lead public gatherings, especially in his home city, Lahore.

The Pakistani government long ago formally banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was widely listed as a terrorist group. But Pakistan had made few public advances against Saeed even after he founded a charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, that is openly considered a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba and that recently began moving into political campaigning.

In January, the government declared him under house arrest, seeming to bow to international pressure and also keeping him from fundraising for Jamaat-ud-Dawa. The arrest order was extended several times until Wednesday, when a three-member judicial body reviewed and rejected a government request to extend Saeed’s detention for 90 more days. His current detention order expires overnight Thursday.

“We are overjoyed to announce that after waiting for 10 long months, our chief will finally be free,” Jamaat-ud-Dawa’s information secretary, Nadeem Awan, said in an interview. “There is a lot of celebration and happiness within our ranks, and we are proud that we have been able to get justice the legal way, through the courts.”