Terror attacks considerably down in 2017: Nacta official

Our citizens stood behind police, military and intelligence agencies never faltering in their resolve to defeat terrorists Ihsan Ghani, National Coordinator of Nacta

islamabad — The effective implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP) has brought down terrorism incidents considerably which stood at 750 in 2017 as compared to 2,060 attacks in 2010.

A lot of sweat and blood has gone into this herculean effort, National Coordinator, National Counter Terrorism Authority (Nacta), Ihsan Ghani, said.

Talking to APP on Sunday, he said NAP was being implemented with full commitment and vigour in coordination with all provinces, security agencies and other stakeholders, thus establishing writ of state throughout territory of Pakistan.

He said effective implementation of NAP has also brought significant improvement in overall law and order and internal security situation in the country, adding that national and international organisations have lauded efforts of Pakistan to curb terrorism and extremism.

“Our citizens have stood behind their police, military and their intelligence agencies, never faltering in their resolve to defeat terrorists and their twisted ideas,” Ghani said, adding, terrorist attacks have been brought down and are expected to go down further.

Highlighting the Nacta’s efforts to choke terror financing, Ghani said in hawala hundi domain Rs1.5 billion has been recovered while 919 cases registered and 1209 persons were arrested.

Similarly, in area of anti-money laundering, the authorities concerned registered 424 cases and arrested 574 persons.

Around 207 Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs) were received from the Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU), 49 of them were converted into cases. The authorities closed 48 STRs while 110 others were under process.

Ghani said these initiatives have helped in establishing stringent controls for making money transfer system fully protected against misuse by terrorists and monitoring of movement of persons under schedule-lV of ATA, 1997 and of money, to effectively combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

These have also helped in capacity building of investigators and imparting training to them in areas of money laundering, terror financing, assets tracing and financial investigation, improving registration of cases of terrorist financing timely, conclusion of investigation and securing convictions from the court, and also regulating donation collection of activities of different NGOs and controlling and timely checking on people involved in illegal forex trade.

The Nacta official said other initiatives to choke terrorists funding included model law for facilitation and regulations of charities. Its purpose is to ensure that every penny donated into charity is accounted for while a National Task Force on choking terror financing was constituted.

This is a coordinating body of over 20 federal and provincial organisations, concerned with policy and operational matters pertaining to combating terror financing.

Regulations and monitoring of the cross-border movement of money, effective regulations of branchless/Internet banking were the other steps, he added. — APP