Pakistan’s former president Pervez Musharraf said on Tuesday that he is “fond of Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed” and is the “biggest supporter” of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and its actions in Kashmir.
Musharraf told Pakistani news channel ARY News from Dubai, “I’m the biggest supporter of Lashkar-e-Taiba and I know the LeT and JuD people like me.” He said he had met Saeed recently.
Musharraf claimed the LeT “was not involved” in the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, but that he has “always been in favour of their action in Kashmir”.
“The LeT has been the biggest force in pressuring the Indian Army in Kashmir,” he said.
Saeed, a United Nations-designated terrorist, was freed from house arrest last week after an order from the Lahore High Court. The US and India had reacted sharply against the verdict. Musharraf also claimed that India and the US got together to get the LeT “declared terrorists”.
When the interviewer reminded Musharraf that his government had banned the LeT in Pakistan in 2002 after the attack on the Indian Parliament, he said he did not know much about Saeed then. “The situation was different,” he said. “My vision was that we were moving towards peace, they [India] were moving towards my agenda to resolve the Kashmir issue”.
In 2007, Musharraf was charged with being involved in the murder of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. He was forced to step down in 2008. In August 2017, a special anti-terrorism court in Pakistan had declared him an absconder in the assassination case. He left the country in March 2016 and now lives in Dubai.
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