Pakistan court acquits 6 leaders of Hafiz Saeed's JuD in terror financing case
Pakistan's Lahore High Court (LHC) on Saturday acquitted six leaders of Hafiz Saeed-led Jamat-ud-Dawah (JuD), the front organisation for the proscribed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), responsible for carrying out the 2008 Mumbai attack, in a terror financing case.
Lashkar-e-Taiba orchestrated the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks that killed more than 160 people. According to Dawn, the trial court had sentenced nine-year imprisonment to each Prof Malik Zafar Iqbal, Yahya Mujahid, Nasrullah, Samiullah and Umar Bahadur while Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki had been awarded a six-month jail term.
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"The appellants challenged their conviction before a division bench of the LHC comprising Chief Justice Muhammad Ameer Bhatti and Justice Tariq Saleem Sheikh. Their counsel argued that the prosecution failed to prove the charge against the appellants beyond a reasonable doubt. He said the trial court had not appreciated the evidence properly which had caused the serious miscarriage of justice," Pakistani media reported.
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He argued that the Al-Anfaal Trust, of which the appellants were members, had no nexus with the proscribed Lashkar-i-Taiba (LeT).
The counsel contended that there was not a whit of evidence that the appellants engaged in any activity that supported the objectives of the LeT or other such organisation. He said the appellants had already disassociated them from the trust way back in the mid 2000s, Dawn reported.
An additional prosecutor general opposed the appeals and argued that the trust was working as a proxy for the LeT owing to which the government proscribed it in 2019. He said the appellants were trustees/office bearers and staunch activists of the trust.
-PTC News
