Hafiz Saeed is the mastermind of the 11/26 Bombay attacks
New Delhi:
Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind behind the 11/26 Bombay attacks, has been sentenced to 10 years in two terrorism cases by a Pakistani court, the PTI news agency reported.
This was not the first time that Hafiz Saeed, head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a front organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist group, was sentenced in a terrorism case by a Pakistani court. In February, Hafiz Saeed and some of his aides were convicted and sentenced to 11 years in a terrorist financing case.
“The Lahore anti-terror court convicted four Jamat-ud-Dawa leaders, including their boss Hafiz Saeed, in two more cases on Thursday,” the PTI quoted a judicial official as saying.
Hafiz Saeed and his two assistants, Zafar Iqbal and Yahya Mujahid, have been sentenced to 10 and a half years each, while his brother-in-law Abdul Rehman Makki has been sentenced to six months in prison.
Hafiz Saeed is wanted in India for planning the 2008 Mumbai attack, when 10 terrorists killed 166 people and injured hundreds more. He is also known as a “global terrorist” by both the United Nations and the United States, who offered a $ 10 million bounty on his head.
Hafiz Saeed was arrested in Pakistan in July last year in connection with terrorist financing cases after international pressure mounted on Pakistan to clarify.
He is being held in the Kot Lakhpat High Security Prison in Lahore.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global watchdog on terrorist financing, is critical in pressuring Pakistan to take action against terrorists who freely roam Pakistan and use their territory to carry out attacks in India.
Pakistan’s counter-terrorism department has filed 41 cases against Jamaat-ud-Dawa leaders and four cases have been decided against Hafiz Saeed so far. The remainder is pending in various counterterrorism courts in Pakistan.
India has long called for international agencies and friendly nations to pressure Pakistan to stop harboring terrorists on its soil. India gave evidence to the Paris-based FATF through various dossiers last year on how Pakistani agencies are funding the Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group that was responsible for a car bomb attack on a CRPF convoy in Jammu’s Pulwama. and Kashmir in February 2019.
Pakistan has since faced potential blacklists by the FATF, which could lead to the downgrading of the country by lenders such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the European Union.
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