Pakistan: No extradition request from India

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan has not received a formal request from India to hand over a group of suspects in last year's deadly Mumbai terrorist attacks and probably would not do so if it did, a government spokesman said Wednesday.

An Indian court on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for 22 Pakistanis accused of masterminding the attacks, in which teams of armed militants rampaged through India's cultural and commercial capital, leaving 166 people dead after a three-day siege.

Indian prosecutors demanded that Islamabad extradite all the suspects, though Pakistan previously said it would not transfer any Mumbai suspects and instead would try them in its own courts if there is enough evidence.

Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said Wednesday that Pakistan and India have no extradition treaty and that no request had been received to hand over the suspects.

Among those sought for arrest are Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, founder of the Pakistan-based Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba — which India blames for the launching attacks — and Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi and Zarar Shah, two leaders of the group.

"I understand these people were not present there in the crime scene in any case," Basit told Associated Press Television News.

He reiterated that if there was evidence that Pakistanis were involved in the attacks they would be tried in Pakistani courts, and said the Indian government should hand over any evidence it has in that regard.

"We are cooperating from day one, and we arrested a few individuals and they are still behind bars in detention and we wish that India had provided us all the relevant material in one go rather than in installments," Basit said.

Pakistan arrested Saeed, Lakhvi and Shah in December after Indian diplomats provided a dossier of evidence in a rare sharing of intelligence between the nuclear-armed rivals, who have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.

But a court in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore earlier this month freed Saeed from house arrest, saying there was not enough evidence against him to keep him detained.

India condemned his release as proof Pakistan was not serious about fighting extremist groups on its soil.

The case is adding tension to the relationship between the two countries even as they try to resume peace talks that were broken off after the Mumbai siege.

The warrants emerged from the ongoing trial of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the only surviving suspected gunman in the attacks.