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Pakistan jails three accused of financing Mumbai attacks

WION Web Team
New Delhi, Delhi, IndiaUpdated: Aug 29, 2020, 07:36 AM IST
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File photo. Photograph:(Zee News Network)

Story highlights

Malik Zafar Iqbal and Abdul Salam were each handed 16-1/2 year total sentences on four charges, to be served concurrently, while a third man, Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki, got 1-1/2 years on one charge. The 2008 Mumbai attacks killed 160 people, including Americans and other foreigners.

A court in Pakistan has sentenced to prison three leaders of Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD), a militant organisation accused by India and the United States of masterminding the 2008 attacks in Mumbai.

Malik Zafar Iqbal and Abdul Salam were each handed 16-1/2 year total sentences on four charges, to be served concurrently, while a third man, Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki, got 1-1/2 years on one charge. The 2008 Mumbai attacks killed 160 people, including Americans and other foreigners.

The sentencing comes ahead of a September deadline for Pakistan to avoid being blacklisted for failing to curb terror financing by global financial watchdog the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The watchdog has called for Pakistan to prosecute those funding terrorism, as well as to enact laws to help track and stop terror financing.

The three men were associates of Hafiz Saeed, who was sentenced to a total of 11 years in prison in February. All the sentences are concurrent so Saeed, Iqbal and Salam will serve five years.

Saeed founded and led Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Saeed says his network, which spans 300 seminaries and schools, hospitals, a publishing house and ambulance services, has no ties to militant groups. Jamat-ud-Dawa funds the militant wing LeT.

A 2011 US sanctions designation describes Iqbal as a co-founder of LeT and in charge of its financing activities. Salam is described as the interim leader of the group during the brief periods when Saeed was arrested in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, and running its network of seminaries.