Once again history is repeating itself. Pakistan’s Lahore High Court has acquitted six dreaded militants of Hafiz Saeed’s Jamat-ud-Dawah (JuD) in a terror funding case.
Earlier, the Pakistani anti-terrorism court had found them guilty of terror financing and sentenced them to nine years in prison. Those sentenced included JuD senior leaders Prof. Malik Zafar Iqbal, Yahya Mujahid (JuD spokesperson), Nasarullah, Samiullah and Umar Bahadur. Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki (the brother-in-law of Hafeez Saeed) was also given a jail term of six months in April this year.
The court had also ordered confiscation of their assets. The anti-terrorism court had said in its ruling that the six accused of the banned outfit JuD had been collecting funds illegally for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), an internationally banned terror group.
Hafiz Saeed-led JuD is the front organisation for the proscribed LeT, the terror outfit responsible for carrying out the 2008 Mumbai attack that killed 166 people, including six Americans.
According to PTI, the Lahore High Court on Saturday set aside the trial court’s conviction order against the six JuD leaders after “the prosecution failed to prove the charge against the appellants beyond reasonable doubt.”
India’s one of most wanted terrorists, the Let chief Hafiz Saeed, an UN-designated terrorist with a bounty of $ 10 million, is already convicted for 36 years imprisonment in five terror financing cases. His punishment is running concurrently. He is serving a jail sentence of 15 years at the Kot Lakhpat Jail Lahore for his conviction in terror financing cases, although his incarceration is a sham.
The global terror financing watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is instrumental in pushing Islamabad to take measures against terrorists roaming freely in Pakistan and using its territory to carry out attacks in India and elsewhere.
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Pakistan’s Imran Khan government “tried” to show the world that it has taken action and banned UN designated terror organisations like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) through tough ordinances. Islamabad’s bury-its-head in sand argument claims LeT is defunct and terror financing cases have been registered against most of the identified leaders of Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Falah-e-Insaniat foundations, and LeT chief Hafiz Saeed, a key accused in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, has been sentenced and jailed for 15 years. Another terrorist leader, JeM’s chief Masood Azhar has a serious medical condition and is bed-ridden in Bahawalpur. But the world knows that all those terror leaders are roaming freely in Pakistan.
Although Hafiz Saeed is lodged in a Lahore jail but this is just an “eye-wash” by Pakistan as part of its review by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which has kept in the “grey-list” since June 2018 for failing to meet the agency’s action plan on cracking down on terror-financing. Saeed, allegedly, has a close relationship with Pakistan’s military and spy agency ISI, which often speaks in his favour. He is also closely associated with the Taliban leadership.
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