Pak court jails spokesperson of Hafiz Saeed-led JuD for 32 yrs in terror financing cases

Lahore: A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Wednesday handed down 32 years imprisonment to the spokesperson of Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed”s Jammat-ud-Dawah (JuD) terror group in two terror financing cases.

The Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) here also convicted two other JuD leaders, including the brother-in-law of Saeed, in terror financing cases.

“ATC Judge Ijaz Ahmad Buttar handed down 32 years imprisonment to JuD spokesperson Yahya Mujahid in two FIRs. Prof Zafar Iqbal and Prof Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki (brother-in-law of Saeed) were awarded 16 and one-year jail terms in two cases,” a court official told PTI.

He said that the two other JuD leaders — Abdul Salam bin Muhammad and Luqman Shah — were indicted in more terror financing cases.

The court directed the prosecution to present its witnesses on November 16.

The suspects were presented in the court in high security and media was not allowed to enter the court premises during the case proceedings.

Last week, the ATC Lahore convicted JuD”s Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki, Zafar Iqbal and Muhammad Ashraf in two more cases of terror financing registered by the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab police.

Zafar Iqbal and Muhammad Ashraf have been given a collective imprisonment of 16 years each under different sections of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Makki has been sentenced to one-year imprisonment in a case with a fine of Rs 170,000.

In September last year, the ATC Lahore handed down over 16 years imprisonment to Prof Zafar Iqbal and Hafiz Abdus Salam bin Muhammad and one-and-a-half-year sentence to Makki in a terror financing case.

In February last year, Saeed had been sentenced to jail for 11 years on terror finance charges by an ATC in Lahore.

The ATC sentenced Saeed and his close aide Zafar Iqbal to five-and-a-half years each in two cases. A total of 11 years sentence will run concurrently. Saeed is serving his term in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail. He was arrested in July last year.

The CTD of Punjab police had registered 23 FIRs against Saeed and his accomplices on the charges of terror financing in different cities of the province.

Saeed-led JuD is the front organisation for Lashkar-e-Taiba which is responsible for carrying out the 2008 Mumbai attack that killed 166 people, including six Americans.

The US named Saeed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, and the US, since 2012, has offered a USD 10-million reward for information that brings Saeed to justice.

He was listed as a terrorist under the UN Security Council Resolution 1267 in December 2008.