Lahore High Court acquits six JuD leaders in terror financing case

The Lahore High Court on Saturday put aside a trial courtroom’s conviction and acquitted six senior leaders of Mumbai assault mastermind Hafiz Saeed’s banned Jamat-ud-Dawah (JuD) in a terror financing case
Saeed-led JuD is the entrance organisation for the proscribed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the fear outfit liable for finishing up the 2008 Mumbai assault that killed 166 individuals, together with six Americans.
The anti-terrorism courtroom Lahore in April this yr had handed nine-year imprisonment every to JuD senior leaders —Prof. Malik Zafar Iqbal, Yahya Mujahid (JuD spokesperson), Nasarullah, Samiullah and Umar Bahadur—and 6 months’ jail time period 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 courtroom had discovered these leaders responsible of terror financing. They had been gathering funds and unlawfully financing the proscribed organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). It had additionally ordered the confiscation of property created from funds collected by means of terrorism financing.
“On Saturday LHC’s division bench comprising Chief Justice Muhammad Ameer Bhatti and Justice Tariq Saleem Sheikh 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 courtroom official instructed PTI.
The official stated the division bench allowed the petition of the JuD leaders, observing “the statement of the ‘star prosecution witness’ is not reliable as there is no corroboratory evidence.”
The counsel of the JuD leaders instructed the LHC that the Al-Anfaal Trust, of which the petitioners have been members, has no “nexus with the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)”.
The regulation officer argued that the belief in query was working as a “proxy for the LeT” and the appellants have been office-bearers of the belief.
The JuD leaders have been produced earlier than the LHC amid strict safety preparations. They had been convicted in different terror financing circumstances and languishing on the Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore.

LeT founder Saeed has additionally been convicted in dozens of FIRs registered by the CTD on fees of terror financing. The CTD had registered as many as 41 FIRs in opposition to the leaders of the JuD in several cities. The trial courts have up to now determined 37 of them.
The ATC has sentenced Saeed to collective imprisonment of 36 years on terror finance fees underneath Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 in 5 circumstances up to now. Saeed’s jail phrases will run concurrently that means he won’t keep in jail for a few years.
He is serving his time period in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail together with different convicted JuD leaders. He was arrested in July, 2019.
The US named Saeed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, and the US, since 2012, has provided a USD 10-million reward for data that brings Saeed to justice. He was listed as a terrorist underneath the UN Security Council Resolution in 2008.