US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland has said that India played no role in the bounty being placed on the former LeT founders.
Nuland stressed that the US announcement of a 10 million dollars bounty on Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, was an internal process, and while affected governments are informed of the step, it is not a consultative process.
Nuland also dismissed the notion that the prize related to Hafiz Saeed’s whipping up public pressure on the Pakistan government to not reopen the NATO supply route, The Express Tribune reports.
“No, it has everything to do with Mumbai and his brazen flouting of the justice system,” she added.
When asked why the US was offering a reward for a non-American, allegedly involved in activities which have not directly targeted Americans, Nuland said, ‘it was because they want to see him brought to justice.”
She clarified that the reward was connected with the deaths of six Americans during the Mumbai attacks, for which India and the US blame Hafiz Saeed, and said that the US was cooperating given US citizens had been killed.
“This is a case that’s been going on for a long time. This is with regard to justice being served on people who have killed Americans, so that there is no impunity for them anywhere in the world,” the paper quoted her, as saying.