Pakistan court suspends one-year jail sentence of 2 senior JuD leaders

Convicted in a terror-financing case, two senior leaders of the Jamaat-ud-Dawah and close aides of mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attack Hafiz Saeed have been freed from their one-year jail sentence by a Pakistani court.

“The Lahore High Court suspended one-year sentence each of Abdul Rehman Makki and Abdus Salam and ordered their release on bail,” a court official said.

The Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) in Lahore in June handed down one-year imprisonment to Abdul Rehman Makki and Abdus Salam for terror financing. The ATC had also imposed a fine of 50,000 Rupees on each on them, failing for which they will have to undergo another six months in prison.

The JuD leaders were convicted under the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997. Both the leaders had challenged their conviction in the Lahore High Court (LHC).

A two-member bench of the LHC comprising Asjad Javed Gural and Waheed Khan held the hearing on their petition and after hearing the arguments from both defense and prosecution, it accepted the plea of Makki and Salam and ordered the suspension of the ATC sentence.

The bench also ordered their release on bail.

According to the ATC verdict, both JuD/LeT leaders were found guilty of terrorism financing. They had been collecting funds and unlawfully financing the proscribed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) organization.

Makki, the head of JuD’s political and international affairs wing and in-charge of its charity Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), was arrested during a government crackdown against the outlawed organizations in May.

In February, Saeed was sentenced to 11 years in jail on terror finance charges by an ATC of Lahore. The ATC sentenced Saeed and his close aide Zafar Iqbal to five-and-a-half years each in two cases.

A total of 11 years sentence will run concurrently.

The counter-terrorism department of Punjab police had registered 23 FIRs against Saeed and his accomplices on the charges of terror financing in different cities of the province.

Saeed-led JuD is the front organization for the LeT which is responsible for carrying out the 2008 Mumbai attack that killed 166 people, including six Americans.