New Delhi, 22 August: Pakistan has confessed for the first time after decades that Dawood Ibrahim (Mastermind of Bombay bomb blast in 1993) is in their country.
However, Pakistan has been on the gray list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an organization monitoring terrorist funding for a long time. Afraid of coming out of this or being blacklisted, Pakistan has released a list of its terrorist organizations and terrorists.
The list also named Dawood Ibrahim, the most wanted terrorist for India after the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts.
Apart from this, the names of 88 banned terrorist organizations including Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar, the conspirators of 26/11 Mumbai attack. Pakistan has imposed stringent financial sanctions on all these and their bosses. In the same way, there are many more.
Pakistan, which was trying to surround India on the international stage, was troubled about two months ago when the FATF, a terrorist funding watchdog, decided to keep it in the ‘gray list’.
The Security Council (UNSC) recently directed Pakistan to take action on terrorists, following which Pakistan has imposed more restrictions on members of its 88 terrorist groups. The biggest thing is that Pakistan has been denying the presence of Dawood Ibrahim till date.
This is the first time that Pakistan has openly acknowledged that Dawood is in Pakistan. Dawood lives in Karachi, Pakistan, besides Hafiz Saeed Ahmed of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Maulana Masood Azhar of Jaish-e-Mohammed and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi. Zakiur Rehman’s name has been on this list since 2015.
Actually Pakistan is currently in the gray list of FATF. If it does not take measures to stop terrorist funding as suggested by FATF then the country can also be blacklisted. This time Pakistan is doing this exercise in an attempt to come out of the gray list. In the same way, there are many more.
Pakistan has issued orders to seize all the assets of 88 banned terrorist organizations and terrorist bosses like Hafiz, Masood Azhar and Dawood and seal bank accounts.
In fact, Sindh province of Pakistan has passed two Bills to take possession of the assets of banned organizations like madrasas, hospitals and other NGOs. Among them, sanctions were also announced on Masood Azhar, chief of Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the 26/11 Mumbai attack and the leader of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. In the same way, there are many more.
In Sindh’s Provincial Parliament, the Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mukesh Kumar Chawla introduced the Sindh Cooperative Bill and Sindh Trust Bill, which was passed.
Pakistan has passed the Anti Terrorist Bill in view of the FATF meeting in October. In the notifications, apart from Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Taliban, Daesh (ISIS), Haqqani network, Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations have been banned.
