ISI chief will not face US court

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani says chief of the country’s top spy agency will not testify in a US court in connection with the Mumbai 2008 attacks.

“ISI is the most sensitive organization of the country and we are also sensitive about this issue,” Gilani told lawmakers during a parliamentary session in Islamabad on Thursday.

Media reports say a New York court has asked Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to appear next month.

The court orders came in the wake of lawsuits filed in the US by a wounded American and the heirs of four others who were killed in the raids.

On November 26, 2008, ten gunmen targeted Mumbai’s luxury hotels in a coordinated attack. There were also separate attacks on the city’s main railway station and a synagogue.

At least 160 people died and about 300 people were injured in the attacks.

India has said that Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militants were responsible for the attacks and demanded Islamabad take action for what it says is the latest anti-India attack launched from Pakistani soil.

Pakistan has rejected the involvement of its government in the attacks, saying that “non-state actors” were involved in the incident. Pakistan says it has intensified its crackdown on a militant group suspected in the Mumbai terror attacks.

Relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors have further soured since the incident.

A recent media report has said that US intelligence officials were aware of plans to attack Mumbai years before the terrorist incident in Mumbai.

A report published by the Washington Post in mid October said that the FBI had been tipped off in 2005 about an American national, who masterminded attacks on the Indian financial hub three years later.