“When Will You Stop Harbouring Terrorists?” — Shehbaz Sharif Walks Away From the Question Pakistan Has Dodged for 17 Years

Confronted at the UN over the 26/11 mastermind, Pakistan's PM had no answer — exposing 17 years of unaccountability

September 25, 2026

Silence at the UN: Sharif dodges questions on Hafiz Saeed, laying bare Pakistan's record on terror prosecution

17 Years, No Answer: Shehbaz Sharif Dodges Hafiz Saeed Question — Twice

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was asked, twice, in the space of a single visit to the United Nations headquarters this week, why his country still hasn’t prosecuted a UN-designated terrorist responsible for one of the deadliest terror attacks in modern history. Twice, he refused to answer. Twice, he simply walked away.

The confrontation, caught on camera as Sharif entered and later left the UN building during the 81st General Assembly, was as brief as it was damning. “Prime Minister, when will you stop harbouring terrorists?” a reporter asked as he walked in. Sharif said nothing. On his way out, the question came again, more pointed this time: “When will you prosecute Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed?” Sharif waved a hand and kept walking.

Seventeen years of silence

There is nothing ambiguous about who Hafiz Saeed is. He is the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group that planned and executed the November 2008 Mumbai attacks — 166 people killed over four days of coordinated shooting and bombing across one of India’s largest cities. He was listed as a terrorist by the UN Security Council within a month of that massacre, on December 10, 2008. He remains, to this day, a free man in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s own courts have never convicted him for the Mumbai attacks. When Saeed petitioned the UN in 2017 to have his name struck from the terrorist list, the UN’s own ombudsman rejected the request, finding there was sufficient information to justify keeping him listed — and noted, pointedly, that even the Pakistani court ruling Saeed’s lawyers leaned on had addressed only whether he was a threat inside Pakistan, not whether he posed one to the rest of the world. In other words: even by Pakistan’s own legal machinery’s telling, the question of Saeed’s threat to countries like India was never actually settled. It was avoided.

That pattern — avoidance dressed up as due process — is precisely what played out again this week at the UN, just on camera instead of in a courtroom filing.

A government that protects rather than prosecutes

India’s National Investigation Agency has formally named Saeed as an accused in a supplementary chargesheet tied to the Mumbai conspiracy, alleging his direct involvement. Pakistan has had seventeen years, multiple changes of government, and no shortage of opportunities to act. Instead, Saeed has spent stretches of that time under loosely enforced house arrest, running a banned organisation under a rebranded name, and living openly in Punjab province — hardly the profile of a state treating a UN-sanctioned terrorist as a fugitive.

Sharif’s silence this week wasn’t a slip. It was a choice, made twice, in full view of the press corps he otherwise courts for statements on Kashmir, on India, on nearly everything else. The same government that is quick to lecture the world on “double standards” evidently has none it’s willing to answer for when the cameras turn to Saeed.

The hypocrisy on full display

Pakistan routinely positions itself at international forums as a victim of instability, a state besieged, a country demanding sympathy on human rights and sovereignty. Yet when directly confronted — not by India’s government, but by a reporter’s microphone at the UN’s own front door — about a man its own allies at the Security Council have sanctioned, its prime minister could not manage a single sentence. Not a denial. Not a defence. Not even a deflection. Just silence, and a wave of the hand.

That is the tell. A government confident in its position explains itself. A government with nothing defensible to say walks past the question and hopes the news cycle moves on. Sharif’s non-answer at the UN did more to expose Islamabad’s actual posture on terrorism than any statement his office could have issued.

The question — when will Pakistan prosecute Hafiz Saeed — remains exactly where it was in 2008: unanswered.

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