Pakistan blocks Islamist party from contesting 2018 election

Pakistan’s interior ministry has asked the election commission to ban the new Milli Muslim League (MML) party from the 2018 general election, on the grounds that it is a front for the Islamist Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group that carried out the Mumbai terror attack in 2008. The new party is led by the attack’s mastermind Hafiz Saeed, who is under house arrest and carries a $10 million US bounty on his head for his role in terrorist activities. Pakistan’s security agencies assert that MML’s acceptance would “breed violence and extremism in politics.”