Put 26/11 perpetrators behind bars: US tells Pak

Lending weight to India's demand that Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed and five other suspects in Pakistan be brought to justice, the US said on Friday said it is "extremly important" that these "blood-thirsty" perpetrators are put behind bars.

The US also said Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayiba posed a "regional and global" threat for it and India. "There are five, probably six, suspects currently being held in Islamabad in connection with the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks," US Ambassador Timothy J Roemer said. "It is extremely important that these six people be brought to justice and put behind bars and receive sentences commensurate with their crimes against India, US and the world," he told media-persons.

Roemer said he hoped that in future the action on 26/11 includes people like Hafiz Saeed and noted that he was put into an Interpol red flag

list recently. "The US is committed in this region to pursue, deter and defeat LeT and other terrorist threats," he said. The US is expending personal treasure and resources to help dismantle infrastructure of terrorism in this region, he added.

"It is time to reflect on the common enemy of the US and India. We share concerns about LeT, al Qaeda and Taliban and the threat emanating from that part of the world and we are working closer and closer together as two great powers to take on a common enemy and bring blood-thirsty perpetrators of these attacks to justice," Roemer said while noting how people of India faced tremendous hardship and loss and devastation. He also described Pervez Musharraf's remark that American anti-terror funds to Pakistan were diverted to strengthen defences against India as a 'very serious allegation', the veracity of which the US will find out.