Source: Government of India (4)

India defines any act as terrorism under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA): “Whoever does any act with intent to threaten or likely to threaten the unity, integrity, security (including economic security), or sovereignty of India or with intent to strike terror or likely to strike terror in the people or any section of the people in India or in any foreign country.” Whoever is involved in these activities is a terrorist, including Pakistan-based terrorists Hafiz Saeed and Sajid Mir (Lashkar-e-Taiba), Masood Azhar (Jaish-e-Mohammed) and others from Pakistan on India’s most-wanted list.

The United Nations defines it, “Terrorism involves the intimidation or coercion of populations or governments through the threat or perpetration of violence. This may result in death, serious injury or the taking of hostages.”

Definition of terrorism as accepted in the United States follows the pattern. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) divides it into “international” and “domestic” terrorism. International terrorism means “violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored)”, whereas domestic terrorism pertains to violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.

Threatening unity, integrity, security or sovereignty of a nation, intimidating its people or the governing machinery, by individuals, or designated foreign terrorists – the core of these definitions – applies to all of the terrorists and their terror groups operating from Pakistan.

For this, they have been designated as terrorists not just by India but by the United States, the United Nations and many other countries, including Pakistan.

The United States designated LeT and JeM as foreign terrorist organisations in December 2001. UN sanctions for JeM came in October 2001; for LeT, they came in May 2005. Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), another Pakistan-based terrorist organisation targeting India, was designated a foreign terrorist organisation by the United States in August 2017.

Hafiz Saeed was sanctioned as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) by the United States in May 2008 with a USD 10 million bounty after the Mumbai terror attack which killed 166 people including six Americans. Saeed was seen as the main perpetrator. Over the next few years, many other terrorists from Pakistan were also included as SDGT: Masood Azhar in November 2010, Sajid Mir in August 2012, and Syed Salahudeen in June 2017. Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, LeT’s operations commander and another key perpetrator behind the Mumbai 26/11 attack, was also designated as a global terrorist. Except Syed Salahudeen, who heads the HM, all others are banned under the ISIL/Al-Qaeda Committee sanctions by the United Nations as well.

These designated terrorists were living a free life in Pakistan, raising funds, radicalising and recruiting terrorists more and more, linking with other terror groups and launching terror attacks against India and other places across the world.

After overwhelming international pressure and financial sanctions, Pakistan was forced to jail some of them, but under much-diluted charges. The way Pakistan has made a mockery of the judicial process becomes evident from how these terrorists were always given the upper hand of supportive governance machinery.

The jail-in and jail-out of LeT chief Hafiz Saeed is a case in point here.

Pakistan was forced to arrest LeT chief Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the 13 December 2001 terror attack on the Indian Parliament. LeT and JeM jointly carried out this attack. After international pressure, Saeed was briefly detained, for three months, but no formal charges were filed against him and a Pakistan court ordered his release.

The mastermind of the terror operations at the sovereign sign of a nation’s identity, its Parliament, was let off without charge, for an incident that got wide condemnation from across the world.

He was again detained in May 2002 after two terror attacks killed 30 people and soldiers in Jammu & Kashmir. In October 2002, Saeed was shifted to his house and kept under house arrest. No charges were filed and the court ordered his release in November 2002.

Saeed was detained for the third time in 2006, reports available show. This time, he was detained after the July 2006 Mumbai train bombing attack. Put under house arrest in August 2006 for badly affecting Pakistan’s ties with other governments through his activities, a court order released him in December 2006.

He was detained for the fourth time in 2008, after the Mumbai terror attack on 26 November, after the United Nations listed him as a terrorist under the resolutions on the ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions List. LeT was blamed for the multiple terror acts in Mumbai that killed 166 people including six Americans and under United States pressure, Pakistan cracked down on Jamaat-ud-Dawa, LeT’s front that called itself a religious charity and that was headed by Saeed. He was again detained (placed under house arrest). The JuD was sanctioned by the United Nations.

What was the end result? Pakistan again failed to provide any evidence and Saeed was released from jail by an order of the Lahore High Court in June 2009.

The international voices post-the Mumbai 26/11 outrage though forced Pakistan to file terror charges against Hafiz Saeed this time, in September 2009, though his formal arrest was years away, past developments show. Also, he was not charged for the Mumbai terror attacks case. The charges filed were for inciting riots through his speeches and terror financing through JuD. Saeed went to court and petitioned against them. Next month, in October 2009, the Lahore High Court quashed those terror charges. The court said as his outfit JuD was not banned in Pakistan, Hafiz Saeed could not be charged as a terrorist. Before it, Pakistan had claimed that JuD was banned inside the country but the high court order clarified it was not.

His next sham arrest came after eight years, in 2017. Pakistan slapped a case against him under the anti-terrorism act, again under international pressure, but diluted it by placing him under house arrest on 30 January 2017. Like in the past, Pakistan again failed to collect and present evidence and the Lahore High Court released him on 24 November 2017. He was put under house arrest after US President Donald Trump called Pakistan a terror haven with his strong anti-terrorism response. The United States government vehemently criticised his release, appealing to Pakistan to re-arrest Saeed again for the terror crimes he committed.

In July 2019, Hafiz Saeed was arrested again, booked under the anti-terrorism laws for terror financing. The trigger this time was from multiple fronts. Global attention, including the pressure put by the United States, initially failed to check the terror tentacles in the country unless it was put under stricter norms of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) guidelines. It was coupled with the deteriorating economy of the nation and its rising external debt. Pakistan was inching towards economic default and only IMF loans were its lifeline as being on the FATF Grey List meant a difficult flow of external money and investment to Pakistan, either by other countries or by many other multilateral lending institutions. External loans from some friendly countries were not able to help much. Also, these loans were raising Pakistan’s external debt even more.

For Pakistan, it needed to come out of the FATF Grey List, as its repeated inclusion in the Grey List was giving it a bad reputation, with misguided economic governance and endemic corruption factors pushing money-laundering and terror financing, the lifeline of terror networks like LeT, JeM and many others existing in Pakistan. No investor, be it an organisation, or a country, would like to loan such a nation or invest there.

Saeed was charged with collecting funds that were routed through religious charities to recruit and fund terrorism. It coincided with the next FATF meeting slated to happen soon on Pakistan’s performance on the corrective guidelines given by the financial watchdog.

The October 2019 FATF Plenary retained Pakistan on the Grey List. Post that, Saeed was formally indicted just within two months, in December 2019, unusually fast for the terrorist who roamed freely in Pakistan in spite of committing grave terror offences. He was jailed for 11 years in a February 2020 verdict for two terror financing cases. The verdict came just one week before the FATF Plenary which again retained Pakistan on the Grey List. In another terror financing case, he was sentenced to fifteen and a half years’ imprisonment in a court verdict in December 2020. It was followed by another two separate five-year prison terms given to him in two more terror finance cases in November 2020.

On 7 April 2022, he was sentenced to 31 years in prison in two other terror finance cases. According to the United Nations Security Council, the terrorist has been handed down a cumulative prison term of 78 years in different terror finance cases. All of these prison terms will run concurrently, but so far he has not been convicted for perpetrating the Mumbai 26/11 terror case, despite India’s innumerable calls, the USD 10-million bounty by the United States and the continued global outrage. Three years are now over and there has been no update on it while Hafiz Saeed, earlier this month, challenged his convictions in a petition filed in the Lahore High Court.

And Hafiz Saeed is not alone. There are many other similar examples that show how Pakistan undermines the judicial process to save terrorist groups and their members operating from its soil. Before the FATF Plenary in March 2021, Pakistan saw another high-profile terrorist, LeT’s Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, convicted in January 2021. He was jailed for three concurrent five-year terms, again for terror financing. As LeT’s operations commander, he was one of the main perpetrators behind the 26/11 terror strike.

Lakhvi was out on bail. He was arrested in December 2008, under intense international pressure, after Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving terrorist of the Mumbai terror attack, identified Lakhvi as the one who indoctrinated him and other terrorists. He got bail in April 2015 and remained on bail, in spite of the grave charges against him. According to a BBC report, while in jail, he was given more luxurious facilities than a common prisoner. Just next to the office, he was given several rooms, television, mobile phone and internet access with dozens of visitors daily visiting him, day or night.

LeT terrorist Sajid Mir, who planned the outfit’s external terror operations and was one of the handlers sitting in Pakistan operating terrorists during the Mumbai 26/11 terrorist attack, was first declared missing and then dead by Pakistan. Before the FATF Plenary in Berlin in June 2022, Sajid Mir was quietly arrested in April 2022 and sentenced to 15 years in prison in May 2022, again for terror financing. Pakistan claimed it had taken effective measures to meet all of the FATF corrective measures, including these high-profile arrests. FATF, after the Plenary, decided to visit Pakistan to verify its claims.

All delayed convictions, under unrelated charges, on terror financing, and not for masterminding and implementing the Mumbai terror attack or other such similar barbaric attacks – the United Nations, the United States, the FATF, the IMF, and the other global community at large – should raise questions and look into it. HM is not even proscribed in Pakistan even if the United States calls it a foreign terrorist organisation and Syed Salahudeen a specially designated global terrorist.

The heinous Pahalgam terror attack of 22 April is a living example – of the audacity shown by Pakistan’s state-supported terror groups, in spite of the country’s claims of successfully curbing money-laundering and terror financing and imprisoning big terror names. Twenty-six innocent civilians were killed and many others injured and a LeT proxy, the Resistance Front (TRF), was behind the attack. The global community needs to see how Pakistan keeps on distorting and undermining the judicial process and keeps on denying the justice India and the world community need.