Pak Claims It Seized Few Assets Of Hafiz Saeed's Terror Groups: Report

Pakistan today claimed that it has acted against banned terror groups and took control of a few assets belonging to Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaat-ud-Dawa and its wing Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation.

The confiscation of properties of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) comes after Pakistan claimed it formally placed the proscribed organisations in the list of banned organisations on Tuesday.

According to Pakistan's National Counter Terrorism Authority or NACTA list, which was updated on Tuesday, Hafiz Saeed's terror groups JuD and FIF were among 70 organisations proscribed by Pakistan's Ministry of Interior under the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.

At least two properties belonging to the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation were taken over by the Pakistan government in a fresh crackdown launched by the law enforcement agencies under the National Action Plan (NAP) on Tuesday, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported.

Major actions were taken in Chakwal and Attock districts after the additional chief secretary of the Punjab province in a meeting with commissioners and divisional police heads via a video link directed the officials concerned to take over the properties, the report stated.

In a subsequent operation, the property of JuD in Chakwal - Madrassa Khalid Bin Waleed in the Talagang area and Madrassa Darus Salam on Chakwal's Railway Road - along with those associated with it were placed at the disposal of the Auqaf Department.

Following the Pakistani Punjab government's directives, the administrators were appointed at the facilities to take over their control.

Three properties of JuD and FIF were spotted in Attock district during a fresh survey conducted by a divisional intelligence committee on February 27, the report said.

The management and operational control of the properties were taken over by the district administration of Attock, it said.

They were Madrassa and Masjid Musab Bin Umair in Peoples Colony, Attock. It was an under-construction structure spread over 13-kanal (1.6 acres) area and its monthly expenditures were Rs 60,000. It was taken over by the chief executive officer of the Attock district education authority.

Hasanabdal assistant commissioner confiscated a 17-marla (0.10 acre) plot of the organisation on Ahmed Din Khan Road and a car bearing a registration plate of Islamabad with monthly expenditure of Rs 18,000, the report said.

A senior police official of Rawalpindi division told said the government had not given any specific directive regarding the crackdown as actions were also being carried out by other security agencies under the National Action Plan, it said.

Both JuD and FIF were placed on the watch list in January 2017.

The Pakistan government on Monday also put out another order claiming it has frozen assets of all UN designated organisations like JuD, FIF.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawa is the front organisation for the Lashkar-e-Taiba which is responsible for carrying out the Mumbai attack that killed 166 people. It had been declared as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US in June 2014.

The US Department of the Treasury has designated Hafiz Saeed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, and the US, since 2012, has offered a $10 million reward for information that brings Hafiz Saeed to justice.

Hafiz Saeed was listed under UN Security Council Resolution 1267 in December 2008. He was released from house arrest in Pakistan in November 2017.

The NACTA has so far declared 70 terrorist organisations as banned and a sizeable number of these organisations are based in Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar's son and brother were among 44 members of the banned terror outfits taken into "preventive detention", Pakistan said on Tuesday, amid mounting pressure from India and the global community on it to rein in the terror groups operating on its soil.

Tensions between India and Pakistan flared up after a suicide bomber of Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed or JeM exploded over 60 kg of RDX near a CRPF bus, killing more than 40 soldiers in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on February 14.

India last week handed over the dossier to Pakistan to take action against the JeM, as pressure mounted on Islamabad to take action against individual and organisation listed by the UN Security Council as terrorists.