In news
Recently, the Pakistan anti-terrorist Court sentenced Mumbai attack mastermind and Lashkar-e-Taiba operations commander Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi to 5 years in jail
Key updates
- Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Court sentenced the UN proscribed terrorist to five years of rigorous imprisonment each on three counts with a fine of PKR 1,00,000 (approximately $620).
- The Court convicted Lakhvi for commission of offences of terrorism financing in a case registered by the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) for 15 years under different sections of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997
About Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi
- He is a Pakistani Islamic terrorist.
- He is the leader of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba and serves as Supreme Commander of Operations in Kashmir.
- He is listed on the Indian Government’s NIA Most Wanted list
- He is the Mumbai attack mastermind and Lashkar-e-Taiba operations commander
- On December 3, 2008, Indian officials named him as one of four possible major planners behind the November 2008 Mumbai Attacks
- Lakhvi, who was on bail since 2015 in the Mumbai attacks case, was arrested by the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab province recently.
- He was designated a global terrorist by the UN in December 2008 for being associated with LeT and al-Qaida and for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing or perpetrating of acts by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf or in support of” both the entities.
About the Lashkar-e-Taiba
- Lashkar-e-Taiba is one of the largest Islamist terrorist organizations in Pakistan.
- It was founded in 1987 by Hafiz Saeed, Abdullah Azzam and Zafar Iqbal with funding from Osama bin Laden
- In 1985, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed and Zafar Iqbal formed the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (Organization for Preaching, or JuD) as a small missionary group dedicated to promoting an Ahl-e-Hadith version of Islam.
- In the next year, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakvi merged his group of anti-Soviet jihadists with the JuD to form the Markaz-ud Dawa-wal-Irshad (Center for Preaching and Guidance, or MDI).
- The MDI had 17 founders originally, and notable among them was Abdullah Azzam.
- The LeT was formed in Afghanistan’s Kunar province in 1990 and gained prominence in the early 1990s as a military offshoot of MDI.
- MDI’s primary concerns were dawah and the LeT focused on jihad although the members did not distinguish between the two groups’ functions.
- Lashkar-e-Taiba has been accused by India of attacking military and civilian targets in India, most notably the 2001 Indian Parliament attack, the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the 2019 Pulwama attack on Armed Forces. Its stated objective is to merge the whole of Kashmir with Pakistan
- The organization is designated as a terrorist organization by Pakistan, India, the United States, other countries including the United Nations (under the UNSC Resolution 1267 Al-Qaida Sanctions List)
Source: The Hindu
