On Thursday, millions of people will sit down at the Thanksgiving table to celebrate with family and friends. For a handful of families, however, Nov. 26 marks a far darker commemoration: the 12th anniversary of their loved ones’ murder in coordinated assault on Mumbai civilian targets by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based and Pakistani intelligence service-trained terror group.
Six Americans died. Three Americans were among the six hostages tortured and executed in the Chabad House. Terrorists gunned down Alan Scherr and his 13-year-old daughter Naomi as they ate with friends at the Oberoi Trident Hotel.
Scores of foreigners died when terrorists went from room to room in the Taj Mahal Hotel. Other Americans barely escaped. More than 140 Indians also died as the terrorists turned their guns on commuters, hotel employees, and police.
Evidence established proof beyond any reasonable doubt of Pakistani complicity in the attack. The Indian investigation, with the results of which the U.S. intelligence community concurs, led, in February 2009, to charges against 35 Pakistani nationals, including members of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, who had aided and abetted the attack.
The Justice Department subsequently filed charges against David Coleman Headley, an American of Pakistani descent, for his role in the attacks. He cooperated with U.S. authorities and is now serving a 35-year sentence.
Pakistani authorities continue to deny culpability. A trial underway in a Pakistani anti-terrorism court against seven suspects has made little headway in more than a decade, as Pakistani officials serially question the sufficiency and legitimacy of evidence against them.
A divisional bench of the Islamabad High Court is now considering a Federal Investigation Agency request for a stay on anti-terrorism proceedings. The court has suspended the trial to give the prosecution time to produce 19 witnesses who have yet to testify, but many of them are refusing to do so out of fear.
Simply put, it is akin to a mafia trial in which not only the defense lawyers but also the judges work for the same crime boss. That the alleged masterminds of the attack are not even on Pakistan’s most-wanted list underscores the lack of seriousness in Islamabad in resolving the issue.
If Pakistan is serious about counterterrorism, it will recognize that there are no factors that justify the Mumbai attacks. What happened in India’s largest city and commercial capital was a crime against humanity, which no military or diplomatic dispute excuses. The refusal to arrest and try Lashkar-e-Taiba co-founder Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and the group’s leader, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, simply highlights the reality that the late Osama bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan was no outlier but was rather evidence of a pattern in which Pakistani authorities protect master terrorists. Pakistan’s insincere approach to countering terror financing, as documented by the Financial Action Task Force, simply reinforces the point.
In recent years, U.S. administrations and courts have taken a no-nonsense approach to prioritizing the rights of victims over those of terror sponsors and recognizing the importance of financial restitution. President Trump, for example, signed the Taylor Force Act into law in March 2018, determining that the United States would withhold funding to the Palestinian Authority in proportion to the amount of money it spent in its “pay to slay” schemes in which it paid pensions to convicted terrorists or their families.
Likewise, a condition for the removal of Sudan from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list was that country’s payment of $335 million to compensate victims of terrorism perpetrated by Sudan-based groups or individuals. The Islamic Republic of Iran has forfeited numerous lawsuits in U.S. courts, while others are ongoing.
The families of Sept. 11 victims likewise seek compensation from Saudi Arabia because of the complicity of some Saudi diplomats in the tragedy of that day. When President Barack Obama vetoed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act in September 2016, both the House of Representatives and Senate overwhelmingly overturned his veto to enact the bill into law.
Citizens of dozens of nations have fallen victim to Pakistan-sponsored terror. The Mumbai attacks alone claimed victims from not only the U.S. and India but also from Australia, Canada, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, Israel, the Netherlands, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, and Mauritius. While only six Americans died in Mumbai, the number of American victims of Pakistani terror support is orders of magnitude higher when Pakistan’s sponsorship of the Taliban is considered.
On Thanksgiving Day, people should be thankful for the liberty, democracy, and religious freedom that we enjoy but should also remember those who have suffered at the hands of states that uphold and embrace their antithesis.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
