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Bitter Winter

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Pakistan: Hafiz Saeed Sentenced to 33 Years in Jail—But Terrorism Continues

04/12/2022Massimo Introvigne |

The Jama’at-ud-Da’wah leader has been convicted of financing terrorism. But who finances Hafiz Saeed?

by Massimo Introvigne

Hafiz Saeed.
Hafiz Saeed. Credits.

On April 8, Muhammad Hafiz Saeed, who was already in jail since July 17, 2019, for other charges, was sentenced by a special anti-terrorism court in Lahore, Pakistan, to a jail term of 33 years for “financing terrorism.” Saeed is 71 and, unless freed by one of the Pakistani amnesties, this means he will presumably die in jail.

There is little doubt that Saeed not only financed terrorism, but is a terrorist himself. He is a co-founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is listed as a terrorist organization both by the United States and the European Union, and was responsible among others for the bloody 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. The United States had placed a bounty of $10 million on his head.

In recent years, Saeed devoted most of his time to Jama’at-ud-Da’wah, the political organization he founded. Although widely regarded as the political branch of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Saeed claimed its aims were purely political and it did not support military operations. The Lahore court thought otherwise.

A particularly opaque area concerns the relationship between Saeed and al Qaeda. While the U.S. have suspected Saeed of being an al Qaeda affiliate, Pakistan believes that he in fact helped the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) to arrest or eliminate senior al Qaeda leaders.

Here precisely lie the problems not solved by the Lahore decision. The court established that Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist organization, was financed by Saeed and his political group Jama’at-ud-Da’wah. The further question, however, is who finances Saeed and Jama’at-ud-Da’wah. This is a subject the court did not want to explore.

Saeed’s terrorist activity has mostly targeted India. His was almost a single-issue terrorist organization, focusing on Kashmir. Many are persuaded, in Pakistan and abroad, that Saeed has consistently been a tool of ISI, and ISI has financed and trained those in Saeed’s terror network.

Until these complicities, which reach out to the highest echelons of Pakistani politics, are investigated and exposed, the well-publicized trials of a few old terrorist leaders will not solve the problem, and terrorism will continue.

Tagged With: Pakistan, Terrorism

Massimo Introvigne
Massimo Introvigne

Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio.  From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.

www.cesnur.org/

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