Pakistan anti-terrorism court sentences Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed to 31 years in jail

26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed was today sentenced to jail for 31 years by an anti-terror court in Pakistan.

Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the terror group Lashkar e Taiba and the chief of Jamaat ud Dawa, was sentenced in two cases. The court also ordered all his assets be seized and fined the UN-designated terrorist ₹ 3,40,000.

Reports suggest 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. But he roams freely across the country while addressing incendiary speeches targeting India with impunity.

He was arrested in 2019, just before Pakistan 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.

Saeed was travelling to Gujranwala from Lahore to appear before an anti-terrorism court when he was arrested by the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab.

The US House Foreign Affairs Committee noted that Saeed had been arrested and released eight times since 2001.

Hafiz Saeed has been blamed for the terror attack on Mumbai 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.