The alleged mastermind of the 2008 attacks
in Mumbai has been jailed in Pakistan for nearly sixyears on terror financing
charges.
Hafiz Saeed is wanted by Washington and New
Delhi for allegedly planning the 2008 attack on India’s financial capital when
10 Islamist militants armed with assault rifles, hand grenades, and other
weapons killed 166 people and injured hundreds more.
Wednesday’s sentence was related to
separate charges that his charity organizations, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and
Falah-e-Insaniat, are fronts for funding the militant group that he founded,
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Hafiz Saeed was found guilty of “being part
of a banned terrorist outfit” and for “having illegal property”, his lawyer
Imran Gill said.
The firebrand cleric is considered a global
terrorist both by the United Nations and the United States, which put a $10m
(£7.7m) bounty on his head.
Alice Wells, the top US diplomat for South
Asia, hailed the conviction, which she said on Twitter was “an important step
forward – both toward holding LeT accountable for its crimes and for Pakistan
in meeting its international commitments to combat terrorist financing”.
India has long said there is evidence that
“official agencies” in Pakistan were involved in plotting the attack – a charge
Islamabad denies.
Saeed has denied involvement but has spent
years in and out detention in Pakistan on various charges, sometimes under
house arrest. For the most part, he has been free to move around the country at
will, enraging India which has repeatedly called for his prosecution.
His most recent arrest came in July last
year. At the time, US President Donald Trump tweeted that he had been detained
“after a 10-year search”, prompting derision from Pakistanis. The US House
foreign affairs committee noted then that Saeed had been arrested and released
eight times since 2001.
Islamabad, which is widely believed to use
jihadist groups such as LeT as proxies against India, has been under
international pressure to crack down on militancy.
Saeed’s jailing comes as Pakistan faces
potential blacklisting by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – an
anti-money-laundering monitor based in Paris – for failing to combat terror
financing. “There was nothing to the case really, this was just due to pressure
from the FATF,” Gill said.
The court’s judgment, seen by AFP, did not
specify which banned terrorist group Saeed belonged to or clarify what was
meant by “illegal property”, which can refer to money or other property. There
was also no immediate comment from the JuD group and coverage of the sentence
was muted on Pakistani news channels.
SOURCE: The Guardian- 12 FEBRUARY 2020
FOLLOW US 👇
https://twitter.com/alhaqcentre
https://al-haqcentre.blogspot.com
https://instagram.com/alhaqcentre
"UNITED AGAINST EXTREMISM!
Comments
Post a Comment