India welcomes US decision to designate 3 LeT militants as global terrorists, says move vindicates its stand on Pakistan

New Delhi: India welcomed the US’s announcement to name three Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists as ‘specially designated global terrorists’ and said the move vindicates its stand that terror groups continue to operate from the neighbouring country with “impunity”. Spokesperson in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Raveesh Kumar said the latest designations also call into question Pakistan’s sincerity in taking effective action against such terrorist elements. “India welcomes the announcements made yesterday by the US Departments of State and Treasury in which three Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) terrorists and terror financiers have been named as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT),” Kumar said. [caption id=“attachment_4336501” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Raveesh Kumar. Image courtesy: Facebook/@MEAIndia[/caption] He said the US announcement vindicates India’s consistent stand that internationally designated terrorist groups and individuals, including LeT and its front, Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF), continue to “operate from and raise financial resources with impunity in Pakistan”. Kumar said the terror groups continue to use territories under Pakistan’s control for carrying out cross-border terrorism in India and elsewhere in South Asia. The US designated three Pakistanis linked to the LeT, the outfit responsible for carrying out the 2008 Mumbai attack, as global terrorists to shut down the militant group’s financial network and curtail its ability to raise funds to carry out violent terrorist attacks. The US designated LeT commander Abdul Rehman al-Dakhil as SDGT. It also took action to disrupt the LeT’s fundraising and support networks by designating two of the group’s financial facilitators, Hameed ul Hassan and Abdul Jabbar, as SDGT. A longtime member of the US designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) and Lashkar e-Taiba (LeT), Dakhil was an operational leader for LeT’s attacks in India between 1997 and 2001. In 2004, Dakhil was captured in Iraq by British forces, then held in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan until his transfer to Pakistan in 2014. After his release from Pakistani custody, Dakhil returned to work for the LeT.