Pak acquits 6 JuD leaders in terror-funding case

Lahore, November 6

The Lahore High Court on Saturday set aside a trial court's conviction and acquitted six senior leaders of Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed’s banned Jamat-ud-Dawah (JuD) in a terror- financing case.

Saeed-led JuD is the front organisation for the proscribed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the terror outfit responsible for carrying out the 2008 Mumbai attack that killed 166 persons, including six Americans. The anti-terrorism court Lahore in April this year had handed nine-year imprisonment each to JuD senior leaders — Prof Malik Zafar Iqbal, Yahya Mujahid (JuD spokesperson), Nasarullah, Samiullah and Umar Bahadur — and six months' jail term to Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki (brother-in-law of Saeed) after an FIR was registered by the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of the Punjab Police. The trial court had found these leaders guilty of terror financing.

They had been collecting funds and unlawfully financing the proscribed organisation LeT. It had also ordered the confiscation of assets made from funds collected through terrorism financing.

“On Saturday, LHC's division bench set aside the trial court's decision in the CTD's FIR 18 of 2020 against the six JuD leaders after the prosecution failed to prove the charge against the appellants beyond reasonable doubt,” a court official said. — PTI

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