India struck nine terrorist-linked locations across Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) in the wee hours of Wednesday (May 7). The attack came in response to the April 22 Pahalgam attack in which 26 people were killed by terrorists. Briefing the media about the strikes, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri reiterated Pakistan’s role in promoting terrorism and how it has become a sanctuary for them.
He added that Pakistan has often misled the world about terrorists residing in its territory. Misri recalled the time Islamabad told the world that Sajid Mir, the main perpetrator of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, was initially reported dead by the country, only to be “brought back to life” later and arrested.
Who is Sajid Mir?
Sajid Mir is a Pakistani national and a member of the militant organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). He is listed as a Most Wanted Terrorist by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Pakistan has always denied that he exists and promoted the idea that he was a fictitious entity. However, those claims were thwarted when French magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière told journalist Sebastian Rotella that Mir is a real person and later in 2009, said that he was a regular official in the Pakistan Army.
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Mir was the mastermind behind the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks that killed 175 people. He visited Mumbai and the Taj Hotel in 2005 after taking on a fake identity and a passport to watch the India-Pakistan ODI Cricket match at Mohali. This information was revealed by Sayed Zabiuddin Ansari in 2012, the handler of the 10 LeT terrorists who unleashed terror over four days in Mumbai.
Ansari said that Mir made a model of the Taj Hotel to help the 10 terrorists learn about every nook and cranny of the structure.
Sajid Mir, FBI’s most wanted terrorist
After the attack, the FBI listed Mir as a most wanted terrorist, with a bounty of $5 million. The FBI page for Mir reads, “Conspiracy to Injure Property of Foreign Government; Providing Material Support to Terrorists; Killing a Citizen Outside the U.S., Aiding and Abetting; Bombing of Places of Public Use.” The Mumbai attacks also left six Americans dead.
In 2020, India sought his extradition, but Pakistan stayed mum. It vehemently denied that Mir was in Pakistan and later claimed that he was dead.
However, later it brought Mir back from the dead to seek Pakistan’s removal from the ‘Grey list’ of the global terror financing watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF). He was arrested in 2022 and sentenced to 15 years in jail by an anti-terrorism court in Lahore amid international pressure.
The FBI also states that Mir “allegedly conspired to commit a terrorist attack against a newspaper and its employees in Denmark between 2008 and 2009.”
