Pakistan: 26/11 Mastermind Hafiz Saeed Gets 33 Yrs in Jail for Terror Financing
Hafiz Saeed is the co-founder of Laskhar-e-Taiba and chief of JuD, and is wanted in India for the Mumbai attack.
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Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) co-founder and mastermind of the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Hafiz Saeed, has been sentenced to 33 years of imprisonment by Pakistan's anti-terrorism court.
The Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed on Friday was convicted in two cases of terror financing registered by the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD), according to news portal Dawn.
Judge Ejaz Ahmad Buttar handed down the guilty verdict in two FIRs from 2019 under various sections of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) of 1997 and imposed a collective fine of Rs 340,000 in both cases.
Reports suggest a mosque and madrassa that Hafiz Saeed allegedly built will be taken over.
The Case
Judge Ejaz Buttar, while pronouncing the judgment, observed that the prosecution had established the charges of terror financing.
"The evidence presented by the prosecution against Hafiz Saeed and Al Dawatul Irshad, an outlawed organisation, was tangible and convincing," Buttar said, as quoted by Dawn.
The CTD had registered as many as 41 FIRs against the JuD leaders in different cities. Trial courts have so far decided upon 27 cases.
Saeed, who was arrested in 2019, is already in jail serving a 15-year sentence after being found guilty on similar charges of terror financing in 2020.
Saeed was the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people were killed.
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