Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the terror group Lashkar e Taiba and the chief of Jamaatud Dawa, was sentenced in two cases on Friday.
An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan’s Lahore sentenced Hafiz Saeed to jail for 33 years. The court also ordered all his assets be seized and fined the UN-designated terrorist Rs340,000. As per reports, a mosque and madrassa that Hafiz Saeed allegedly built will be taken over.
Hafiz Saeed, 70, has been sentenced in multiple cases of terror-financing in the past. In 2020, he was sentenced to 15 years in jail.
He has spent years in and out of detention in varying forms in Pakistan, sometimes under house arrest.
He was arrested in 2019, just before Pakistani PM Imran Khan’s visit to the US. At the time, US President Donald Trump had tweeted that Saeed had been detained after a 10-year search. Although he was roaming freely across the country and arrange public gatherings while he was designated as a terrorist by the UN and the US. Saeed was named as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the United States. He was also listed under the UN Security Council Resolution 1267 in December 2008.
The US House Foreign Affairs Committee noted that Saeed had been arrested and released eight times since 2001.
Hafiz Saeed also has been blamed for the terror attack on Mumbai, India on November 26, 2008, in which 166 people were killed.
In 2017, Hafiz Saeed and his four aides were detained by Pakistan but they were released after nearly 11 months when the Judicial Review Board of Punjab refused to extend their confinement.
According to reports, Saeed was brought to the court from the Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore where he had serving jail term since 2019 in strict security.