Mumbai Attack Mastermind Lakhvi Sentenced to 15 Years “Imprisonment”
NEW DELHI, Jan 8: A Pakistan court on Friday sentenced Mumbai attack mastermind and Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi to 15 years “in prison” in a terror financing case.
Lakhvi was arrested by Pakistan police on Saturday. He is alleged to have played an important role behind the Mumbai attacks, during which 166 people were killed and over 300 injured in November, 2008.
“The Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC), Lahore, convicted Lakhvi for commission of offences of terrorism financing in a case registered by the Counter Terrorist Department (CTD) for 15 years under different section of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997,” a court official said.
A Pakistan court earlier on Thursday issued an arrest warrant for banned Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar on the charges of terror financing.
Many Indian officials believe that these arrests and court convictions coming ahead of the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) review meeting in February regarding Pakistan inclusion in its ‘grey list’ for misuse of funds for acts of terrorism, were mere eye-wash.
Pakistan was put in FATF’s grey list in 2018 after the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog pointed out Pakistan’s failure to control terror financing and money laundering. In October, FATF president Marcus Pleyer had warned Pakistan that the nation needs to increase its efforts to control misuse of funds for acts of terrorism. Pleyer had also told the Pakistan government to quickly act on the body’s recommendations, failing which could result the nation entering FATF’s ‘black list.’
(Manas Dasgupta)
