Hafiz Saeed files defamation suit

Lashkar chief’s notice in response to foreign minister’s remarks at Asia Society forum in US

Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Mohammad Saeed’s legal team has sent a Rs100 million (Dh3.4 million) defamation notice to Pakistan’s foreign minister, Khawaja Asif, for his remarks at the Asia Society forum in New York earlier this week.

Asif, who told the forum that Pakistan was not to blame for militant outfits in the country, had said: “Don’t blame us for the [insurgent group] Haqqanis and don’t blame us for the Hafiz Saeeds. These people were your darlings just 20 to 30 years back. They were being dined and wined in the White House and now you say ‘go to [expletive] Pakistanis because you are nurturing these people’.”

The notice, served by Advocate A.K. Dogar on Friday, claimed that Saeed, the chief of banned Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) party was “respected as a deeply religious and devout Muslim”, Dawn online reported on Saturday.

It accused Asif of speaking “an absolute lie and falsehood that Hafiz Mohammad Saeed was one of those persons who had been the darlings of Americans and had been dining and wining in the White House”.

The notice stated that Asif made a “defamatory statement punishable under Section 500 of the Pakistan Penal Code to five years imprisonment and with [a] fine”.

A Pakistani court earlier this week extended by a month the detention of Saeed, blamed for the 2008 Mumbai terror attack that left 166 people dead.