ACTION ON HAFIZ SAEED CHARITIES NOT UNDER US PRESSURE: PAK

Pakistan has acted against Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaat-ud Dawa and Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation not under “pressure” from the US but after “serious deliberations”, defence minister Khurram Dastgir Khan said on Wednesday.

Pakistan has banned Saeed-led JuD and FIF from collecting donations on Monday, after US President Donald Trump accused Islamabad of giving nothing to the United States but “lies and deceit” and providing “safe haven” to terrorists. The government has banned companies and individuals from making donations to the JuD, the FIF and other organisations on the UNSC sanctions list.

The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) issued a notification prohibiting the collection of donations by the JuD, the front organisation of banned outfit Lashkar- e-Taiba, as well as several other such organisations named in a list of banned outfits by the UN Security Council. “We have taken action against the JuD and the FIF not on the pressure of the Trump administration. We have initiated action against Saeed’s organisations after ‘serious deliberations’. It is not taken in haste,” Khan told BBC Urdu.

He said the action was part of the ‘Operation Radul Fasaad’, launched in February last year by the Pakistan military to disarm and eliminate the hidden terrorist sleeper cells across the country with support of local law enforcement agencies.

“We have taken action against the organisations...so that our children remain safe in schools. We do not want that one day they (people associated with these organisations) attack their own country with guns,” the minister said. PTI

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