Hafiz Saeed, other JuD leaders still freely using group's offices despite ban in Pakistan

LAHORE: Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed and other leaders of the JuD and the FIF are still freely using the banned groups' offices despite Pakistan's claims that all the assets of the two outfits have been seized and their bank accounts frozen, an official said today.

The government last month had taken over the Jamaat-ud-Dawa's famous Muridke Markaz and Lahore's headquarters of Masjid Al Qadsia in Chauburji. But on ground neither Saeed and his supporters left the JuD's Chauburji headquarters nor that of Muridke and other offices of JuD and the Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) in the country.

"Since the government has taken over the control of JuD headquarters in Lahore in mid last month, Saeed delivered three Friday sermons in three successive weeks there in the presence of a large number of his supporters. The government could only deploy its administrator at Al Qadsia while the JuD men are operating from there the way they used to," an official of the Punjab government told PTI today.


A similar arrangement was made at JuD's Muridke headquarters, he added.

"The government has not barred Saeed and activists of his charities from using the JuD headquarters in Lahore and Muridke, and other offices of the two organisations," he said.

The government had initiated action against Saeed's organisations in pursuance of an ordinance issued by President Mamnoon Hussain in February amending the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997, and allowing the state to proscribe UNSC-listed organisations, some of which had been exempt from prosecution.

The move had also come in the backdrop of a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental money-laundering watchdog, that put Pakistan on a grey list.
At the FATF meeting in Paris last month, Saeed and his "charities" were top on the list of the groups that the FATF wanted Pakistan to act against.