• Friday, March 29, 2024

PAKISTAN

Pakistan jails three accused of financing Mumbai attacks

Indian policeman prepare to take position at the site of attack in Colaba area of Mumbai on November 27, 2008. Nearly 80 people were killed in a series of shootings and blasts across India’s financial capital Mumbai late 26 November, the state government said. The Maharashtra state government said the death toll had risen to 78, according to the Press Trust of India news agency, and that six Indian army units had been deployed to the south of the city. Heavily armed men with automatic weapons and grenades targeted two of Mumbai’s top luxury hotels, the Taj Mahal and Trident, and the main Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station. AFP PHOTO/Indranil MUKHERJEE (Photo credit should read INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images)

By: ShelbinMS

A court in Pakistan has sentenced to prison three leaders of Jamat-ud-Dawa, an organisation accused by India and the US of masterminding the 2008 attacks in Mumbai.

The sentencing comes ahead of a September deadline for Pakistan to avoid being blacklisted for failing to curb terror financing by global financial watchdog the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

Inclusion on the blacklist, alongside Iran and North Korea, would mean being shunned by international financial institutions. The watchdog has called for Pakistan to prosecute those funding terrorism, as well as to enact laws to help track and stop terror financing.

Malik Zafar Iqbal and Abdul Salam were each handed 16-1/2 year total sentences on four charges, to be served concurrently, while a third man, Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki, got 1-1/2 years on one charge, according to a court judgment.

The men were associates of Hafiz Saeed, who was sentenced to a total of 11 years in prison in February. All the sentences are concurrent so Saeed, Iqbal and Salam will serve five years.

Saeed founded and led Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or the Army of the Pure, a group blamed by India and the US for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which killed 160 people, including Americans and other foreigners.

Saeed and his associates also face a further slew of cases for allegedly financing militant activities, while Iqbal and Makki have already been convicted in several cases.

Saeed says his network, which spans 300 seminaries and schools, hospitals, a publishing house and ambulance services, has no ties to militant groups. Jamat-ud-Dawa funds the militant wing LeT.

A 2011 US sanctions designation describes Iqbal as a co-founder of LeT and in charge of its financing activities. Salam is described as the interim leader of the group during the brief periods when Saeed was arrested in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, and running its network of seminaries.

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