Pak anti-terror court sentences 3 JuD leaders

ISLAMABAD: An anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Lahore on Friday sentenced up to five years three top leaders of the banned Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and close aides of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed on terror related charges.
ATC judge Ejaz Ahmad Buttar sentenced Abdur Rehman Makki (Saeed’s brother-in-law), Malik Zafar Iqbal and Abdus Salam on different counts. They were sentenced to imprisonment for one-and-a-half year with a fine of Rs 20,000 each under Section 11-F of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), 1997.According to Section 11-F of ATA, a person is guilty of an offence if he belongs or professes to belong to a proscribed organization, supporting activities of a banned outfit or addressing a meeting or delivering a sermon to its members and supporters.
The trio was also sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs 50,000 each under ATA for the use and possession of money or any other property for the purposes of terrorism.
They were also awarded separate five years of rigorous imprisonment and fined Rs 50,000 each for fundraising for acts of terror.
The three terrorists were also sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs 50,000 each for funding arrangements for the purposes of terrorism.
“All the sentences shall run concurrently of this case and of previously awarded, if any (sic),” the verdict read.
The Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab police had registered 23 FIRs against 70-year-old Saeed and his accomplices on the charges of terror financing in 2019 in police stations of Lahore, Gujranwala, Multan, Faisalabad, Sahiwal and Sargodha.
The CTD accused them of using properties of religious seminaries and mosques for terror financing.
Saeed had also been indicted in at least five cases along with his other colleagues. The suspects, however, had rejected the allegations as baseless and claimed the government registered the cases as a result of “international pressure”.
Last February, the court had handed down five-and-a-half-year rigorous imprisonment each to Saeed and Malik Zafar Iqbal in two of such cases.
Saeed, a UN designated terrorist whom the US has placed a $10 million bounty on, was arrested on July 17, 2019, and is lodged at the high-security Kot Lakhpat jail here.
Saeed-led JuD is the front organisation for the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is responsible for the 2008 Mumbai carnage that had left 166 people dead, including six Americans.
The US named Saeed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, and since 2012, has offered a $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.