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FBI team visited Faridkot?

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani media have reported that a team of the Federal Bureau of Investigation visited Faridkot in Pakistan’s Punjab province but could find no evidence that the surviving gunman from the Mumbai attacks came from there. But The News said Rehman Malik, who heads the Interior Ministry, denied the report.

U.S. embassy spokesman Lou Fintor told The Hindu that he had “no information” about the visit of an FBI team to Faridkot or even to Pakistan.

Geo television channel said the five-member team, led by its South Asia director William Robert, visited the village late on Wednesday to find out if Ajmal Amir, the gunman who was captured in Mumbai, hailed from there but found no evidence. Dawn newspaper reported that the team which visited Faridkot was the same that interrogated Ajmal in Mumbai.

PTI reports:

Pakistan has said it would act on the issue of consular access to Ajmal Amir after completing its own investigation into his admission that he was a Pakistani citizen.

“We are currently carrying out our own internal investigations to ascertain whether Ajmal ‘Kasab’ is from Pakistan. We will deal with this issue after our investigations are complete,” Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Sadiq told reporters here.

Ajmal recently sent a letter to the Pakistan government seeking legal aid. Officials had earlier said authorities were examining his letter.

India on Thursday said the U.S. has provided “strong evidence” to Pakistan about the involvement of the Lashkar-e-Taiba in the attacks and that Islamabad should now hand over the culprits. A day after U.S. media reports said a key Lashkar operative had “confessed” to involvement in the attacks, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said Pakistan was yet to demonstrate “tangible” action against the perpetrators though it was obliged to do so under international laws.

“We have been told that there is some strong evidence available with the FBI and they have shared it with Pakistan. We expect that Pakistan will act on it,” he told NDTV.

U.S. media reports on Wednesday said the top LeT commander Zarar Shah confessed to the group’s involvement in the attacks and the U.S. provided Islamabad with the tape of a conversation his associate Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi, the alleged mastermind, had with the attackers.

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