ISI chief won’t appear in US court over 26/11

ISLAMABAD - Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani Thursday declared that the country’s spy master will not appear in any US court in connection with the Mumbai terror attack.

Addressing the National Assembly, he said the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) “is a sensitive agency of the Pakistani military and it is unimaginable that we will force their officers to appear in the US court on foreign dictation”.

Gilani was responding to a fiery speech by opposition leader Nisar Ali Khan who took the government to task over what he described as a failed foreign policy.

“The situation has deteriorated so much that the chief of our premier intelligence agency is now being summoned (to the US) without taking our government into confidence,” Khan said.

A court in Brooklyn, New York, has summoned ISI chief General Ahmad Shuja Pasha and two other officers as well as activists of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa in connection with a case related to the November 2008 Mumbai terror attack.

The case has been filed under US laws by the family of five American nationals, four of whom were killed in the Mumbai savagery. The fifth was injured.

Foreigners were among the 166 people killed in the attack. Most were Indians.

“Our mission in (the US) is yet to receive the summons and we can’t comment before going through its contents,” the Pakistani foreign office had said Wednesday.