Pakistani Court Releases Militant

A Pakistani court freed a top leader of a banned Kashmiri militant group from house arrest Saturday, and India said that was proof Pakistan continued to support terrorism.

Maulana Masood Azhar of Jaish-e-Mohammed, a group that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf outlawed a year ago for waging an insurgency in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, was placed under house arrest in the Punjabi city Bahawalpur in December 2001.

Under a Public Safety Act, Azhar’s arrest has come up for review by a special judicial commission every three months. On Saturday, a three-member review board of the Lahore High Court rejected a request by the Punjab Home Department to extend Azhar’s detention for three more months, saying there were no grounds to keep him.

Azhar was one of three men released from an Indian prison in a deal with New Delhi after an Indian airliner was hijacked in late 1999 to Kabul, the Afghan capital. The other two men freed were Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, also known as Sheikh Omar, convicted this year for the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar.

“It is quite clear that investigation and charges against Masood Azhar have not been pursued by Pakistani authorities with any seriousness,” an Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement.

New Delhi blames Pakistan for allowing Pakistan-based militant groups to cross into the Indian-ruled portion of Kashmir to fight an insurgency there that has claimed more than 35,000 lives since 1989.