Pakistan freezes 964 assets of banned JuD, JeM

The government has frozen 964 properties of proscribed outfits Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), the interior ministry informed the Senate on Wednesday.

In response to Jamaat-e-Islami Senator Mushtaq Ahmed’s query, the ministry told the upper house of parliament that 907 of the frozen properties belonged to JuD and 57 to JeM.

Submitting the ministry’s written reply to the Senate, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan elaborated that the provincial home departments had frozen the properties of proscribed organisations under the United Nations Security Council (Freezing and Seizure) Order, 2019 issued by the foreign affairs ministry.

A total of 611 properties of JuD were frozen in Punjab, followed by 108 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 80 in Sindh, 61 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, 30 in Balochistan and 17 in Islamabad Capital Territory.

Similarly, eight properties of JeM were frozen in Punjab, 29 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 12 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, four in Islamabad Capital Territory, three in Sindh and one in Balochistan.

The frozen properties of the JuD include 76 schools, four colleges, 330 mosques and seminaries, 186 dispensaries, 15 hospitals, 262 ambulances, a funeral bus, three disaster management offices, 10 boats, 17 buildings, a plot, an agricultural land and two motorcycles.

The properties of the JeM frozen by the government include 53 mosques and seminaries, two dispensaries and two ambulances.

Earlier this year, an anti-terrorism court had sentenced JuD chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed to five-and-a-half years in prison in two cases after finding him guilty of terror financing and affiliation with an outlawed group.

In July last year, 13 top leaders of the banned outfit, including its chief Hafiz Saeed and Naib Emir Abdul Rehman Makki, were booked in nearly two dozen cases of terror financing and money laundering under the ATA. Hafiz Saeed was later arrested by the CTD on July 17 while he was travelling between Gujranwala and Lahore.

The CTD, in a major crackdown against terror financing, registered 23 cases against Saeed and 12 aides for using five trusts to “funnel funds to terror suspects”.

The CTD said it had registered cases under the ATA in Lahore, Gujranwala and Multan against the leadership of banned outfits JuD, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF)

The accused were raising funds using five trusts — Dawatul Irshad Trust, Moaz Bin Jabal Trust, Al Anfaal Trust, Al Madina Foundation Trust and Alhamd Trust.

The government had placed the JuD in its list of banned outfits in February last year and decided to launch a crackdown on the JeM, which was banned in 2002 by then military ruler General Pervez Musharraf.

The decision was made to take action against the individuals and organisations banned by United Nations Security Council. The LeT too is among the list of proscribed outfits since 2002.