Founding father of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group blamed by US and India for the 2008 Mumbai assaults, sentenced in two instances of terror financing.
A Pakistani court docket has sentenced Hafiz Saeed, founding father of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the armed group blamed by the USA and India for the lethal 2008 Mumbai siege, to 31 years in jail in two instances of terrorism financing.
Court docket paperwork present Saeed was discovered responsible of a number of breaches within the two instances, nevertheless it was not instantly clear how a lot jail time it will entail given his present incarceration and the sentences’ working concurrently.
“The sentences awarded to convict Hafiz Muhammad Saeed run concurrently of this case and of beforehand awarded, if any,” stated a court docket order dated April 7.
Saeed, who was arrested in 2019, is already in jail serving a 15-year sentence after being discovered responsible on comparable expenses of terror financing in 2020.
His lawyer, Naseeruddin Nayyar, stated Saeed can enchantment the most recent sentence.
Saeed has been arrested and launched a number of occasions over the previous decade and denies involvement with armed operations, together with the 2008 Mumbai assaults by which 166 individuals have been killed, a few of whom have been People.
The US supplied a reward of $10m for info resulting in the conviction of Saeed.
Following his arrest, the Pakistani authorities seized Saeed’s intensive community of mosques, colleges, seminaries and charities and different belongings within the nation.
Below Pakistani legislation, until a sentence is thrown out or lowered on enchantment, Saeed must serve them consecutively.
The LeT group was lively for years within the disputed Himalayan area of Kashmir, which is cut up between Pakistan and India however claimed by each.
Relations between Pakistan and India have been strained after the Mumbai assault. The rival South Asian powers have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.
Saeed’s conviction additionally comes as Pakistan tries to keep away from punitive blacklisting by international soiled cash watchdog the Monetary Motion Process Pressure, which judges a rustic’s capacity to fight illicit financing, together with to armed teams.
Pakistan has remained on the “gray listing” since 2018.