Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed has been convicted by a Pakistan court in terror financing cases. The Mumbai terror attack mastermind has been sentenced to five years in jail. This comes two days before the Financial Action Task Force's plenary in Paris that will decide on Pakistan's blacklisting/greylisting.
Earlier on Tuesday, an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan had accepted a plea of Hafiz Saeed to club all six terror financing cases against him and his aides. The anti-terrorism court had indicted Saeed and others on December 11 in terror financing case in a day-to-day hearing.
Saeed is nominated in about 29 cases pertaining to terror financing, money laundering as well as illegal land grabbing. The terror financing cases were filed by the Counter-Terrorism Department's (CTD) Lahore and Gujranwala chapters. The case filed by the CTD's Gujranwala chapter was initially being heard in a Gujranwala ATC but was shifted to Lahore on the directions of the Lahore High Court.
During the trial of both cases, the court recorded the statements of 23 witnesses.
The JuD chief was arrested by the CTD in July last year, while he was travelling from Lahore to Gujranwala.
Prior to his arrest, 23 first information reports had been registered against JuD leaders, including Saeed and JuD Naib Emir Abdul Rehman Makki, at CTD police stations in Lahore, Gujranwala, Multan, Faisalabad and Sargodha in July 2019.
According to the CTD, the JuD was financing terrorism from the massive funds collected through non-profit organisations and trusts including Al-Anfaal Trust, Dawatul Irshad Trust, Muaz Bin Jabal Trust and others.
These non-profit organisations were banned in April last year as the CTD, during detailed investigations, found that they had links with the JuD and its top leadership.
The crackdown on the JuD last year followed a warning by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force to Pakistan to deliver on its commitments to curb terror financing and money laundering.
The government had announced a ban on the JuD and the Falah-e-Insanyat Foundation (FIF) to partially address the concerns raised by India that Pakistan supported these and six similar organisations, including Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) or at least considered them low-risk entities.
Law enforcement agencies over the next few weeks had intensified their crackdown on the JeM, JuD, FIF and other banned outfits, and arrested more than 100 activists.
Nearly 200 seminaries besides hundreds of other facilities and assets associated with them across the country were taken over by the Pakistan government.
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