Lahore: A Pakistani anti-terrorism court has sentenced five leaders of Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed’s Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) to nine years of imprisonment each in a terror financing case.
Three of them — Umar Bahadar, Nasarullah and Samiullah — have been convicted for the first time since the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) Lahore pronounced its verdict some time ago in the terror financing cases registered by the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) of the Punjab police.
The other two — JuD spokesperson Yahya Mujahid and senior leader Prof Zafar Iqbal — had already been convicted for many years in other terror financing cases.
ATC Lahore Judge Ejaz Ahmad Buttar on Saturday handed down nine-year imprisonment to each five of them. The judge also ordered a six-month jail term to Saeed’s brother-in-law Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki in the same case.
The court found the JuD/LeT leaders guilty of offence of terrorism financing. They had been collecting funds and unlawfully financing the proscribed organisation, LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba). The court has also ordered confiscation of assets made from funds collected through terrorism financing, the CTD said.
The CTD of Punjab Police had registered 41 FIRs against the JuD leaders, including 70-year-old Saeed, in terror financing cases. The trial courts have so far decided 37 of them. The ATC had sentenced the LeT founder, Saeed, for a collective imprisonment of 36 years on terror finance charges under sections 11-N of Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 in five cases so far. Saeed’s jail terms will run concurrently. That means he will not stay in jail for many years. He is serving his term in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail along with other convicted JuD leaders.