India defines a terrorist under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA) as: “Whoever does any act with intent to threaten or likely to threaten the unity, integrity, security (including economic security), or sovereignty of India or with intent to strike terror or likely to strike terror in the people or any section of the people in India or in any foreign country.”
Anyone involved in these activities is a terrorist, including terrorists such as Hafiz Saeed and Sajid Mir (from Lashkar-e-Taiba), Masood Azhar (from Jaish-e-Mohammed), and others from Pakistan who are on India’s most-wanted list.
The United Nations defines terrorism as activity “that involves the intimidation or coercion of populations or governments through the threat or perpetration of violence. This may result in death, serious injury or the taking of hostages.”
The definition of terrorism, as accepted in the United States, follows a similar pattern. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) divides it into “international” and “domestic” terrorism.
International terrorism means “violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organisations or nations (state-sponsored)”, whereas domestic terrorism pertains to “violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.”
Threatening the unity, integrity, security, or sovereignty of a nation, or intimidating its people or governing machinery, by individuals or designated foreign terrorists – the core of these definitions – applies to all the terrorists and their terror groups operating from Pakistan.
For these reasons, they have been designated as terrorists not just by India but also by the United States, the United Nations, and many other countries, including Pakistan.
The United States designated LeT and JeM as foreign terrorist organisations in December 2001. UN sanctions against JeM came in October 2001; for LeT, they followed in May 2005. Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), another Pakistan-based terrorist organisation targeting India, was designated a foreign terrorist organisation by the United States in August 2017.
Hafiz Saeed was designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) by the United States in May 2008, and a USD 10 million bounty was offered for information leading to his capture, following the Mumbai terror attack which killed 166 people, including six Americans. Saeed was identified as the main perpetrator. Over the next few years, many other terrorists from Pakistan were also designated as SDGTs: Masood Azhar in November 2010, Sajid Mir in August 2012, and Syed Salahudeen in June 2017. Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, LeT’s operations commander and another key perpetrator behind the Mumbai 26/11 attack, was also designated as a global terrorist.
Furthermore, except for Syed Salahudeen, who heads HM, all the others have also been banned under the ISIL/Al-Qaeda Committee sanctions by the United Nations.
These designated terrorists were living freely in Pakistan, raising funds, radicalising and recruiting individuals, liaising with other terror groups, and launching terror attacks against India and other locations worldwide.
After outrage and overwhelming international pressure, Pakistan was forced to jail some of them, but under much-diluted charges, making a mockery of the judicial process. The approach adopted by Pakistan illustrates how these terrorists consistently received preferential treatment from a supportive state machinery.
The pattern of arrests and releases of LeT chief Hafiz Saeed is a case in point. Founded in 1990, LeT’s first recorded terrorist incident in India was in 1993. Since then, it has carried out many such attacks, targeting Jammu & Kashmir and many other states, in order to destabilise India.
CYCLE OF DILUTIONS
Pakistan was forced to arrest LeT chief Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the 13 December 2001 terror attack on the Indian Parliament, an attack jointly carried out by LeT and JeM. After India’s investigation and international pressure, Saeed was briefly detained for three months, but no formal charges were filed against him, and a Pakistani court ordered his release soon after, citing lack of evidence, even though their role in the attack was clearly established and had been conveyed to Pakistan.
The mastermind of the terrorist attack on a nation’s sovereign symbol, its Parliament, was let off without any case against him, though he was responsible for an incident that drew widespread condemnation from across the world.
He was again detained in May 2002 after the United States designated LeT as FTO in December 2001, forcing Pakistan to proscribe it in January 2002. LeT was behind many terror attacks in Jammu & Kashmir that year raising outrage, but just four months later, in October 2002, he was shifted to his house and kept under house arrest. No charges were filed, and the court ordered his release in November 2002, citing lack of evidence.
Saeed was detained for the third time in 2006, according to available reports. This time, he was detained after the July 2006 Mumbai train bombing attack. He was placed under house arrest in August 2006, ostensibly because his activities were, as Pakistan then claimed, severely damaging its ties with other governments; however, a court ordered his release in December 2006.
He was detained again, for the fourth time, in 2008, after the Mumbai terror attack on 26 November, with India submitting a dossier of evidence and the United Nations listing him as a terrorist under the resolutions on the ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions List. LeT was found to be behind the multiple terror acts in Mumbai that killed 166 people, including six Americans. Under increasing international pressure, Pakistan was forced to crack down again, this time on Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), an LeT front organisation masquerading as a religious charity headed by Hafiz Saeed. He was detained but, in a display of Pakistan’s duplicity, he was placed under house arrest even though JuD had been sanctioned by the United Nations.
Predictably, Pakistan again failed to provide any evidence, and Saeed was released from detention by an order of the Lahore High Court in June 2009.
Though the pressure of international voices following the Mumbai 26/11 attack forced Pakistan this time to file terror charges against him in September 2009, even though, as past developments indicated, his formal arrest was still years away.
An examination of the formal charges framed against him reveals that he was not charged in connection with the Mumbai terror attack case. The charges filed were for inciting riots through his speeches and terror financing through JuD. Saeed petitioned the court against these charges. The following month, in October 2009, the Lahore High Court quashed even those two terror charges. According to the court, since his outfit JuD was not banned in Pakistan, Hafiz Saeed could not be charged as a terrorist. Previously, Pakistan had claimed to the world that JuD was banned within the country, but the High Court order clarified this was not the case.
His next sham arrest came after eight years, in 2017. Pakistan again slapped a case against him under the anti-terrorism act, again due to international pressure, but, as on previous occasions, diluted the action by placing him under house arrest on 30 January 2017. Once again, Pakistan failed to collect and present evidence, and the Lahore High Court released him on 24 November 2017, even though his detention this time followed US President Donald Trump’s strong anti-terrorism stance, in which he labelled Pakistan a terror haven. The United States government vehemently criticised his release, appealing to Pakistan to re-arrest Saeed for the terror crimes he committed.
FROM HOME TO JAIL
In July 2019, Hafiz Saeed was arrested again, and this time, he was sent to jail. He was booked under anti-terrorism laws for terror financing. The trigger this time came from multiple fronts. Global pressure, including that exerted by the United States, which had initially failed to curb the country’s terror networks, appeared to be effective this time as the country was placed under the stricter scrutiny of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) guidelines. Pakistan faced its third inclusion on the Grey List in 2018. This coincided with the nation’s deteriorating economy and its rising external debt.
Pakistan was inching towards an economic default, and IMF loans were its primary lifeline, as being on the FATF Grey List meant restricted access to external money and investment from other countries and many multilateral lending institutions. External loans from some friendly countries were insufficient to alleviate the situation significantly. Furthermore, these loans exacerbated Pakistan’s external debt.
Pakistan urgently needed to be removed from the FATF Grey List, as its repeated inclusion was damaging its reputation; its misguided economic governance and endemic corruption were perceived as factors enabling money-laundering and terror financing – the lifeblood of terror networks like LeT, JeM, and many others operating in Pakistan – to flourish. Few investors, whether organisations or countries, would be willing to lend to or invest in such a nation.
Saeed was charged with collecting funds that were routed through religious charities to recruit and fund terrorism. This coincided with the next FATF meeting slated to review Pakistan’s performance on the corrective guidelines given by the financial watchdog.
The October 2019 FATF Plenary retained Pakistan on the Grey List. Subsequently, Saeed was formally indicted within just two months, in December 2019 – an unusually swift process for a terrorist who had previously roamed freely in Pakistan despite having committed grave terror offences. He was subsequently jailed for 11 years in a February 2020 verdict for two terror financing cases. The verdict came just one week before the FATF Plenary, which again retained Pakistan on the Grey List. In another terror financing case, he was sentenced to a fifteen-and-a-half-year prison sentence. This was followed by another two separate five-year prison terms in two more terror finance cases.
On 7 April 2022, he was sentenced to 31 years in prison in two more terror finance cases. According to the United Nations Security Council, this terrorist has received a cumulative prison term of 78 years in different terror finance cases filed against him.
All these prison terms will run concurrently, but so far he has not been convicted for perpetrating the Mumbai 26/11 terror attack, despite India’s innumerable calls, the USD 10 million bounty offered by the United States, and continued global outrage. It is now over three years since his last conviction in April 2022, and there have been no updates on this front. Meanwhile, earlier this month, Hafiz Saeed challenged his convictions in a petition filed in the Lahore High Court.
And Hafiz Saeed is not alone. There are many other similar examples that show how Pakistan undermines the judicial process to protect terrorist groups and their members operating from its soil. Before the FATF Plenary in March 2021, Pakistan saw another high-profile terrorist, LeT’s Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, convicted in January 2021. He was jailed for three concurrent five-year terms, again for terror financing. As LeT’s operations commander, he was one of the main perpetrators behind the 26/11 terror strike.
He was arrested in December 2008, under intense international pressure, after Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving terrorist of the Mumbai terror attack, identified Lakhvi as the one who indoctrinated him and other terrorists. He was granted bail in April 2015 and remained on bail, despite the serious charges against him. According to a BBC report, while in jail, he reportedly enjoyed luxurious facilities. Located next to the jailer’s office, his accommodation reportedly included several rooms, a television, a mobile phone, and internet access, with dozens of visitors allowed daily, day or night.
LeT terrorist Sajid Mir, who planned the outfit’s external terror operations and was one of the handlers in Pakistan who remotely controlled the terrorists during the Mumbai 26/11 terrorist attack, was first declared missing and then dead by Pakistan. Before the FATF Plenary in Berlin in June 2022, Sajid Mir was quietly arrested in April 2022 and sentenced to 15 years in prison in May 2022, again for terror financing.
Pakistan claimed it had taken effective measures to meet all FATF corrective measures, including these high-profile arrests, and curbing money-laundering and terror financing operations. FATF, after the Plenary, decided to visit Pakistan to verify its claims and removed it from the Grey List in October 2022.
COSMETIC MEASURES
The fact that these convictions were delayed, were for unrelated charges of terror financing, and not for masterminding and implementing barbaric attacks like Mumbai 26/11 or other similar barbaric attacks, should prompt the United Nations, the United States, the FATF, the IMF, and the wider global community to raise questions and investigate the underlying reasons.
HM is not even proscribed in Pakistan, even though the United States designates it a foreign terrorist organisation and Syed Salahudeen is a specially designated global terrorist.
The heinous Pahalgam terror attack of 22 April is a living example of the brazenness shown by Pakistan’s state-supported terror groups, despite the country’s claims of successfully curbing money-laundering and terror financing and imprisoning high-profile terrorists. The continued existence of terror groups and terrorists on Pakistani soil reveals the cosmetic nature of anti-terror measures taken by Pakistan so far.
Twenty-six innocent civilians were killed and many others injured in the terror incident by an LeT proxy, The Resistance Front (TRF). The global community needs to see how Pakistan persistently distorts and undermines the judicial process and denies the justice India and the world community demand.