Islamabad: Authorities have confirmed that Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) leader and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founding member Abdul Salam Bhuttavi, who trained terrorists for the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks, was found dead inside his prison cell in Sheikhupura town of Punjab province.
Authorities claimed that the JuD leader’s death had occurred due to cardiac arrest last week. “It was a severe heart attack and it caused sudden death on the spot in a prison cell,” a well-placed source confirmed. His funeral prayers were held at LeT’s headquarters in Muridke, near Lahore.
Bhuttavi (78) was believed to be a key figure responsible for indoctrination of LeT terrorists and its affiliated outfits. He, however, was not sentenced for masterminding the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Prior to a deadline of September 2020 for Pakistan to avoid being blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force (an international financial watchdog) for failing to curtail "terror financing," a court in Pakistan had sentenced him to prison time along with two other JuD leaders, Malik Zafar Iqbal and Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki. Each of them were handed more than 16 years in jail to be served concurrently. The men were considered to be close associates of LeT founder Hafiz Saeed. Bhuttavi was described as the interim leader of the group during the brief periods when Saeed was arrested following the Mumbai attacks, and running its network of seminaries. In mid-2002, Bhuttavi was in charge of establishing an LeT organisational base in Lahore.