[Dawn] Pakistan confirmed on Saturday seven suspects were in detention over last year's Mumbai attacks, calling on India to provide more information to bring the perpetrators to justice. Interior Minister Rehman Malik told a news conference that Pakistan had made tremendous progress over investigations into who was responsible and said the government was determined to secure their conviction in court. India blamed the November attacks on the outlawed militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba and the siege stalled a four-year peace process between the two nuclear-armed countries. 'We have arrested seven accused despite sketchy information,' said Mr Malik.
That means they're gonna get off, of course. There's no such thing as "adequate evidence" if you don't want the evidence to be adequate.
Pakistan said previously it was holding five men over the assault in which 10 Islamist gunmen went on a 60-hour rampage that killed 166 people. The minister said another two suspects were arrested after the Indian and Pakistani prime ministers met in Egypt last July.
Pakistan has begun highly secret court proceedings and in July five suspects appeared before a special court behind closed doors. Court officials said they included the alleged mastermind Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and an alleged key LeT operative Zarar Shah. 'They are all in our custody and a charge-sheet is likely to be issued by the court very soon,' said Mr Malik, giving no date.
India insists it will resume talks to normalise ties only after Pakistan brings to justice the alleged perpetrators of the November 26-29 siege. 'We want to see them convicted,' said Mr Malik. 'There has been considerable progress. We have done the investigation with a very skilful professional team... the results have been tremendously good,' the minister added, urging India to provide more details. 'The court wants authentic documents and we have requested this dossier, dossier number five which includes all the requests -- particularly that information which we need from India,' he said.
India says it has so far provided four dossiers to Islamabad containing information relating to suspects and the logistics of the attacks. The lone surviving gunman on trial in India said that he and the others were Pakistanis who came to Mumbai undetected by sea. 'The boat used for the transportation of the terrorists has also been recovered and seized,' the Pakistani interior minister said.