India, US condemn cross-border terrorism; call for perpetrators of 26/11 attacks to be brought to justice

Team Udayavani, Sep 25, 2021, 5:04 PM IST

Credit: Reuters photo

Washington: India and the US have said that they will take concerted action against all terrorist groups, including groups proscribed by the UN as they condemned cross-border terrorism and called for the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks to be brought to justice.

A Joint Statement issued after the first bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden at the White House on Friday said that the United States and India stand together in a shared fight against global terrorism.

The two leaders reaffirmed that the United States and India “will take concerted action against all terrorist groups, including groups proscribed by the UNSCR 1267 Sanctions Committee.”

They “condemned cross-border terrorism, and called for the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks to be brought to justice. They denounced any use of terrorist proxies and emphasised the importance of denying any logistical, financial or military support to terrorist groups which could be used to launch or plan terror attacks,” the joint statement said.

Pakistan-based radical cleric Hafiz Saeed’s Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) is the front organisation for the Lashkar-e-Taiba which is responsible for carrying out the 2008 Mumbai attack that killed 166 people, including six Americans.

Saeed, a UN designated terrorist whom the US has placed a $10 million bounty on, was arrested on July 17 last year in the terror financing cases. The 70-year-old JuD chief is lodged at Lahore’s high-security Kot Lakhpat jail.

India has repeatedly called upon Pakistan to take credible, verifiable and irreversible action against terrorist networks and to bring the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks to justice.

The two sides noted that the upcoming US-India Counterterrorism Joint Working Group, Designations Dialogue, and renewed US-India Homeland Security Dialogue will further strengthen counterterrorism cooperation between the two countries, including in the areas of intelligence sharing and law enforcement cooperation, the joint statement said.