Pakistani authorities sentenced two terrorists on terror-financing charges

A Pakistani court has sentenced two alleged members of banned organizations to long prison terms on terrorism-financing charges.

The anti-terrorism court in the port city of Karachi published its verdicts in the two separate cases on December 29.

Ghulam Rasool Rabbani, an alleged member of Jamaat-ud Dawa (JuD), was sentenced to 25 years in prison and a fine of 2.2 million rupees ($13,700), while Muhammad Shakirullah, said to belong to Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), was handed a 20-year prison term in absentia and a 1.1 million rupee ($6,800) fine.

Rabbani, who owns the Jamia Masjid Babul Haramain Sharifain Trust mosque and its madrasah in Karachi, was arrested on November 15.

Prosecutors alleged the man had been collecting money for JuD that was then used to finance terrorism, an accusation he rejected.

In November, a court in Lahore sentenced JuD leader Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the alleged mastermind of the deadly 2008 attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai, to five and a half years in prison on similar charges.

The verdicts come as Pakistan faces potential punitive blacklisting by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental organization that underpins the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.

The organization, which has kept the country on its “gray list” since 2018, urged Islamabad in October to implement a set of guidelines by February next year.

Source: RFERL