The court adjourned the procedure until Wednesday (representation)
Lahore:
A Pakistani counterterrorism court indicted four senior Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) leaders banned in a terrorist financing case on Tuesday. The four are close associates of the brain of the Mumbai terrorist attack, Hafiz Saeed.
The court charged Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki, Malik Zafar Iqbal, Yayha Aziz and Abdul Salam in one of the cases against them for terrorist financing.
The four accused, however, pleaded “not guilty” and chose to contest the trial.
The court adjourned the proceedings until Wednesday, with instructions to the prosecution to present witnesses against the suspects.
The Punjab Police Department of Counter Terrorism (CTD) has registered 23 FIRs against 70-year-old Hafiz Saeed and his accomplices accused of financing terrorism in various cities in the province.
Hafiz Saeed, a UN-designated terrorist to whom the United States paid a $ 10 million bonus, was arrested on July 17, 2019 and is currently detained at the Kot Lakhpat high security prison in Lahore.
The JuD led by Hafiz Saeed is the lead organization for Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the 2008 Mumbai bombing, which killed 166 people, including six Americans.
The United States has appointed Hafiz Saeed a specially designated global terrorist, and the United States has, since 2012, offered $ 10 million in compensation for any information bringing Saeed to justice. He was listed as a terrorist under United Nations Security Council resolution 1267 in December 2008.
In February, the Lahore counterterrorism court sentenced Hafiz Saeed and his close associate Zafar Iqbal to five and a half years and fined 15,000 rupees in two terrorist financing cases. Prison sentences in both cases will be carried out simultaneously.
The United States welcomed the condemnation of Hafiz Saeed and described it as an “important step” for Pakistan in fulfilling its international commitments to fight the financing of terrorism and not to allow non-state actors to operate from its soil.
The crackdown on Saeed’s organization last year followed a warning by the international terrorist financing watchdog in Pakistan to honor its commitments to curb terrorist financing and money laundering.
