Daily Times

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government Saturday launched a crackdown against Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and its humanitarian arm Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), sealing their offices and impounding ambulances, a JuD provincial leader told Daily Times.

Officials of the Peshawar administration backed by police and other law enforcement agencies launched the clampdown against moveable and immoveable properties of the JuD and FIF following directions by the central government.

“Yes, a number of our offices and movable assets have been sealed or taken over by the government. Some ambulances of our organisation in Abbottabad have been impounded in the crackdown,” Sadaat Hussain, JuD provincial leader, told Daily Times. Hussain said the JuD head office in Peshawar located at Chowk Fowara in Saddar has been sealed while orders have been circulated barring the organisation’s mosques from holding any programmes.

However, when approached two ministers of the KP government said they were unaware of the development. The provincial authorities jerked into action around two months after the federal government released a list of proscribed organisations in January this year, blacklisting 72 groups including JuD and its charity arm FIF. The Ministry of Interior had declared aiding and abetting any of those blacklisted organisations, financially or otherwise, a crime. Subsequently, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) in a notification also barred people from donating to these organisations. In February, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) placed Pakistan on the ‘grey list’, highlighting deficiencies in the anti-money laundering and countering of terrorist financing framework of Pakistan.

Published in Daily Times, March 18^th 2018.