Mumbai Chabad house after 2008 attack
Mumbai Chabad house after 2008 attackFlash 90

Pakistan’s security forces on Saturday arrested an alleged leader of the terrorist organization that was behind the bloody 2008 Mumbai attacks in India, The Associated Press reported.

An official with the Pakistani counterterrorism police, Shakil Ahmed, said that Zaikur Rehman Lakhvi was seized in the eastern city of Lahore, on terrorism financing charges.

Lakhvi is alleged to be a leader of the Lashker-e-Taiba group that organized the Mumbai attacks in 2008 in which 166 people were murdered.

Lakhvi was detained days after the Mumbai attacks but released in 2015 by Pakistani courts. Pakistani authorities allege he was running a dispensary in Lahore as a front for financing terrorist activities.

The three-day attack in November 2008 targeted luxury hotels, a popular café, a train station and the local Chabad center, whose directors Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivky were murdered.

While they were among six people taken hostage in the center and killed by the gunmen, their young son Moishe, then aged two, was plucked to safety by his nanny.

In 2012, India executed the sole surviving gunman, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab.