ISLAMABAD: PPP Chairman and former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Friday said Pakistan had no objection to extraditing “individuals of concern ” to India as a confidence-building measure, as long as New Delhi showed willingness to cooperate in the process.
Ties between Pakistan and India have remained tense, further strained after New Delhi, without presenting evidence, blamed Pakistan for the deadly April attack in occupied Kashmir’s Pahalgam. This led to a four-day military confrontation in May, with both sides dropping their guns after American intervention .
The PPP chairman has repeatedly called for India and Pakistan to engage in a dialogue to establish peace.
Speaking during an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, the PPP chief responded to a question about extraditing Laskhar-i-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafiz Saeed and Jaish-i-Muhammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar as possible concessions and good-faith gestures to India.
“As part of a comprehensive dialogue with Pakistan, where terrorism is one of the issues that we discuss, I am sure Pakistan would not be opposed to any of these things,” Bilawal said.
Both LeT and JeM have been banned by Pakistan, according to the National Counter Terrorism Authority (Nacta).
Bilawal added that cases prosecuted against these “individuals” were those related to Pakistan, such as terrorist financing. However, he noted that prosecuting them for cross-border terrorism was difficult due to noncompliance from Delhi.
“India is refusing to comply with certain basic elements that require that conviction to take place,” he explained. “It’s important … to present evidence within these courts, for people to come over from India to testify, to put up with whatever the counter-accusations will be.
“If India is willing to be cooperative in that process, I am sure there will be no hurdle in extraditing any individual of concern.”
Bilawal also expressed concern about India’s vow to pursue terrorists, calling it a “new abnormal”.
“The new normal or the new abnormal that India would like to impose in the subcontinent … is that any terrorist attack within India means war with Pakistan,” he said. “This does not serve the interests of Pakistan, and it does not serve the interests of India.
“Two nuclear-armed countries have got to the point that they have reduced the threshold for military conflict … to this level, which in effect means that we leave the destiny of 1.7 billion people not in the hands of the Pakistani or Indian government, but to nameless, faceless non-state actors,” he added.
Pressed on the whereabouts of Saeed and Azhar, Bilawal stated that the former was incarcerated , while stating that Islamabad believes the latter is in Afghanistan.
“It is factually not correct that Hafiz Saeed is a free man; he is in the custody of the Pakistani state,” he maintained, stating that Islamabad has been unable to arrest Azhar.
“It is our belief that he is in Afghanistan,” Bilawal stated. “If and when the Indian government shares information that he is on Pakistani soil, we will be more than happy to arrest him.
“But the fact is that the Indian government is not referring to them, nor any of these individuals involved in the terrorist attack that justified this war,” the PPP chief continued.
“We went to war on a lie. This is a precedent that has been set and India is trying to exploit: you cry terrorist and attack a sovereign, Muslim country.”
