Anurag Kumar
NEW DELHI: Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) leader Abdul Salam Bhuttavi, who helped prepare the terrorists who carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks, has perished while serving a sentence for financing terrorism in a Pakistani prison.
2012 saw the designation of Bhuttavi as a terrorist by the United Nations Security Council. Several years later, he was apprehended and charged with financing terrorism by Pakistan. In August 2020, he was convicted in a terror financing case alongside LeT founder Hafiz Saeed’s brother-in-law Abdul Rahman Makki. Bhuttavi was given a 16-and-a-half-year sentence.
The death of Bhuttavi, who also served as acting leader of the LeT when the group’s founder Hafiz Saeed was detained by Pakistani authorities in 2002 and 2008, was declared late on Monday night by several organizations affiliated with the terrorist group.
Monday afternoon, according to the announcements, Bhuttavi perished of a heart attack in a jail in Sheikhupura, Punjab, Pakistan. LeT’s front organizations also released a video purportedly depicting the Tuesday morning burial of 78-year-old Bhuttavi at the terror group’s’markaz’ or center in Muridke, near Lahore.
Indian intelligence officials also verified the death, but said additional information was unavailable at this time.
In November 2008, 166 people, including citizens of several countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, were murdered and dozens more were injured when a 10-member LeT team attacked multiple locations in Mumbai over the course of three days. For the attacks, Pakistan detained seven LeT members, including operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, but no progress has been made in their trials.
When the US Treasury Department sanctioned Bhuttavi in September 2011, it stated that he was responsible for 20 years of LeT fundraising, recruitment, and indoctrination.
“Bhuttavi…aided in preparing the operatives for the Mumbai assaults of November 2008 by lecturing on the merits of martyrdom. Bhuttavi has issued fatwas authorizing LeT/JuD’s militant operations, instructed group leaders and members, and is responsible for LeT/JuD’s madrassah network, the US Treasury Department said in a statement at the time.
In 2012, the United Nations Security Council designated Bhuttavi as a terrorist for having connections to al-Qaeda and for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing, or carrying out of acts or activities” by LeT.
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The Security Council at the time characterized Bhuttavi as a founding member of LeT and Hafiz Saeed’s deputy.
“On at least two occasions when Saeed was detained, Bhuttavi acted as the emir of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba/Jamaat-ud-Dawa (LeT/JuD). Saeed was detained days after the Mumbai attacks in November 2008 and confined until June 2009. During this time period, Bhuttavi managed the group’s daily operations and made independent decisions on its behalf. Saeed was also detained in May 2002, according to the notification from the Security Council.
