Pakistani terrorist Hafiz Muhammad Saeed who co-founded Islamist militant organizations Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and Jamaat-ud-Dawa was sentenced to another 33 years behind bars on April 9, after an anti-terrorism court found him guilty on several counts of terror financing. However, since he is already in prison, the sentences will run concurrently, and Saeed might not end up spending any additional time in prison after several convictions.Hafiz Saeed has been placed under house arrest on a number of occasions, first when the Indian government blamed him for masterminding the December 2001 attack on its Parliament, and then after the Mumbai train bombings of 2006. While Pakistan claims that as of December 2019, Saeed is in the Kot Lakhpat jail, also known as Central Jail, Lahore, he is in fact kept at a ‘rest house.’ It is no coincidence that Saeed, the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, was first convicted in a case just a few weeks before an FATF review meeting.
Saeed has been convicted and freed many times and whenever he has become vocal about the inconvenience of the government, placed under house arrest, and whenever Pakistan is due for a FATF review. In July 2019, three months before the scheduled review of Pakistan’s action plan by the Financial Action Task Force, Saeed was arrested by Pakistani authorities and sentenced to an 11-year prison sentence. With this latest sentencing the government will be hoping to convince FATF that the country is meeting, if not exceeding, its conditions to remove Pakistan from its grey list.This is a typical pattern. In January 2021, Lashkar-e-Taiba operations commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi was convicted in a terror financing case. Lakhvi, who was on bail since 2015 in the Mumbai attack case, was arrested by the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab. The timing of these actions clearly suggested the intention of conveying a sense of compliance ahead of APJG (Asia Pacific Joint Group) meet and the next FATF (Financial Action Task Force) plenary meet in February 2021.
In Pakistan’s ecosystem of religiously inspired militant groups, the Lashkar-e-Taiba/ Jamaat-ud-Dawa brand is one of the biggest. It has the blessings of the establishment and is given free rein to operate in the country. Following 9/11, it was banned but continued to operate — until the 2008 Mumbai attacks, in which LeT was accused of having played a central role. The state apparatus has banned the group’s operations — albeit in a half-hearted manner.
Hafiz Saeed has been placed under house arrest on a number of occasions. In between December 2001 and March 2002, Saeed was arrested and released three times after the terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (Let) was accused of attacking Indian Parliament.From August 2006 to October 2006, Hafiz was detained after LeT was linked to multiple train bombs in Mumbai. The JUD chief was placed under house arrest after LeT was blamed for Mumbai attacks.Then, in 2009, a Pakistani court ruled that the continued house arrest of Jamat-ud-Dawa founder Hafiz Saeed was unconstitutional. His son, Talha Saeed, a cleric living in the Pakistani city of Lahore, had been actively involved in recruitment, funding, planning and execution of attacks in India and on Indian interests in Afghanistan.
Over the years, Pakistan has failed in its counter-terrorism commitment to the international community. The fact that the numerous arrests of Hafiz Saeed and others is an eyewash for the international community is evidenced by the fact that merely two weeks after Pakistan was retained in the FATF grey list, the Lahore High Court (LHC) on November 7, 2021 freed six terrorists including those who were the masterminds of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, Prof Malik Zafar Iqbal, Nasrullah, Samiullah, Yahya Mujahid, Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki and Umar Bahadur. All the six were mentored by Hafiz Saeed. The 2- Judge Division Bench of the Lahore High Court claimed that there was a miscarriage of justice at the trial court level, “The appellants cannot be convicted for the mere reason that LeT or the trust have been proscribed.”
In April 2021, a New York-based Artificial Intelligence start-up ‘Castellum’ had revealed that Pakistan has silently removed the names of almost 4,000 terrorists from its terror watch list, including those of LeT leader and Mumbai attack mastermind Zakir ur Rehman Lakhvi.in October 2018 the country’s terror watchlist had 7,600 names. Subsequently, ‘Castellum’ noted that Pakistan removed 1,069 names from the Proscribed person List and all those names appeared on the country’s de-notified list. Further 800 names were removed and eventually 3800 names were placed, without any explanation or notification to the public. Several of the names removed are the aliases of designated terrorists listed by the US or the United Nations.
When the United States announced a bounty of US$10 million on Saeed, for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, Saeed mocked the bounty order, “I am living my life in the open and the U.S. can contact me whenever they want.” He subsequently stated that he was ready to face “any American court” to answer the charges and added that if Washington wanted to contact him, they knew where he was. At a press conference that he was openly holding, he declared, “This is a laughable, absurd announcement. Here I am in front of everyone, not hiding in a cave.” Despite the mountain of evidence against Hafiz Saeed, in 2020, the United Nations committee had allowed him to use his bank account. The UN Committee said that with no objections being raised to Pakistan’s request for Hafiz Saeed’s basic expenses, the Chair has approved the appeal.
British-born al-Qaeda terrorist Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was was aquited last year in the sensational kidnapping and beheading of US journalist Daniel Pearl, has been moved to a GOR (Government Officers Residences) colony, a high-security area. The court which acquitted him directed the Punjab government, “The detainee Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh shall be accommodated in a government rest house with the provision of facilities for a normal life.” On January 28, 2021 the Supreme Court — by a majority of two to one — had upheld the Sindh High Court’s acquittal of Sheikh and ordered his release if he was not wanted in any other case. Parents of the slain journalist and the US government has asked the Pakistan government to ensure that those involved in murdering Pearl should be punished had appealed against the high court’s decision, but the apex court upheld the acquittal order. The court had also directed that all the other accused — Fahad Nasim Ahmed, Syed Salman Saqib and Adil — be released forthwith unless they were wanted in any other case.
Founder and leader of the Pakistan-based terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed, radical Islamist and terrorist, Mohammad Masood Azhar Alvi, descrbed by the BBC as “the man who brought jihad to Britain” is active in the Pakistani-administered portion of the Kashmir region. On 7 December 2008, it was claimed that he was among several arrested by the Pakistani government after a military raid on a camp located on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad in connection with the 2008 Mumbai attacks. He continued to live in Bahawalpur. Pakistan’s government denied it had arrested Masood Azhar and said it was unaware of his whereabouts On 26 January 2014, Azhar reappeared after a seclusion of two years. He addressed a rally in Muzaffarabad, calling for the resumption of jihad in Kashmir.
Similarly, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Lashkar-e-Taiba operations commander and mastermind of the Mumbai 26/11 carnage, has been roaming around the state on bail for the past four year .
Pakistan has been frequently accused by various countries, including its neighbours Afghanistan, India, and Iran, as well as by the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, of involvement in a variety of terrorist activities in both its local region of South Asia and beyond. In July 2019, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, on an official visit to the United States, acknowledged the presence of some 30,000–40,000 armed terrorists operating on Pakistani soil. He further stated that previous administrations were hiding this truth, particularly from the United States, for the last 15 years during the War on Terror. In its ‘Country Reports on Terrorism 2020’, the US Department of State noted that several terrorist groups continue to operate from Pakistan, especially those targeting India such as the LeT and its affiliated front organizations, and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). It further added that Pakistan did not take action against other known terrorists such as JeM founder and UN-designated terrorist Masood Azhar and 2008 Mumbai attack “project manager” Sajid Mir, both of whom are believed to be roaming free in Pakistan.
According to a latest report prepared by Pakistan’s Punjab police, there is high pendency of anti-terrorism cases against 667 proclaimed offenders, including those belonging to the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), as law enforcers are finding it hard to arrest the ‘terrorists.’ The alleged terrorists, including the members of the militant organisations, local handlers, facilitators and the 4th schedulers, are at large and they have been declared proclaimed offenders (POs).
Many nonpartisan sources believe that officials within Pakistan’s military and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) sympathise with and aid Islamic terrorists, saying that the “ISI has provided covert but well-documented support to terrorist groups active in Kashmir, including the al-Qaeda affiliate Jaish-e-Mohammed”.Satellite imagery from the FBI suggest the existence of several terrorist camps in Pakistan. Several detainees at the Guantanamo Bay facility told US interrogators that they were aided by the ISI for attacks in the disputed Kashmir Region. The ISI, is suspected of aiding major terrorist attacks across India including terrorism in Kashmir, the July 2006 Mumbai Train Bombings, the 2001 Indian Parliament attack, the 2006 Varanasi bombings, the August 2007 Hyderabad bombings,and the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.
The latest conviction of Hafiz Saeed is part of Pakistan’s song-and-dance routine to cover up its sponsorship of terror. Already Islamabad’s theatrics have devolved into farce. Even now, JuD regularly conducts mass rallies and congregation,advocating jihad in Kashmir. JuD also asks donations for its anti-India and pro-jihad campaigns.Every time FATF meetings loom on the horizon, there is a flurry of faux anti-terrorist activity by Pakistan. Symbolic arrests are routinely conducted before every FATF meeting, and 2022 is no different from last year in that respect.