ISLAMABAD (AFP) –A Pakistani anti-terror court on Wednesday threw out requests to acquit seven suspects accused by rival India of helping to carry out the 2008 Mumbai attacks, a defence lawyer said.Pakistan is holding seven suspects over theovember 26-29 siege on India's financial capital, including the alleged mastermind of the operation, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, and alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative Zarar Shah.The court in the garrison town of Rawalpindi indicted the men on the eve of the first anniversary of India's worst militant attacks, which killed at least 166 people and ruptured a fragile peace process with Pakistan."The court dismissed the acquittal plea by the seven men and adjourned the hearing until January 16," lawyer Shahbaz Rajput told AFP by telephone.All seven put forward their applications, disputing the veracity of evidence from the prosecution.The anti-terror court met in a special room set up in the high-security Adiala jail and journalists have been barred from all hearings."The seven people had requested the court that the prosecution's evidence had no validity in the eyes of law," Rajput said.India and Washington blamed the Mumbai siege on Pakistan's banned militant group LeT. The attacks stalled a fragile four-year peace process between the two nuclear-armed South Asian rivals.New Delhi has been pressuring Islamabad to speed up a probe of Pakistani militants blamed for the 60-hour siege that saw 10 heavily armed gunmen target luxury hotels, Mumbai's main railway station, a restaurant and a Jewish centre.India and Pakistan have fought three wars since gaining independence from British rule and splitting in 1947.
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