LAHORE: Jamatud Dawa chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and his seven aides have approached the Lahore High Court challenging a case carrying charge of terror financing lodged by the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) by ‘wrongly’ showing them as members of the proscribed Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT).

In a joint petition filed through senior lawyer A.K Dogar, the JuD leaders submitted that the facts narrated in the impugned FIR lodged on July 1, 2019 illegally described them as members of the LeT and levelled unlawful allegation of terror financing.

The counsel referred to a 2009 judgment by a full bench of the LHC against the detention of Hafiz Saeed at that time and stated that the petitioners were not members of the LeT.

He stated that the LHC through another judgment issued in 2003 had held that Saeed had left the leadership of LeT on Dec 24, 2001 while the organisation was banned on Jan 14, 2002.

The lawyer pleaded that the claim of the government that the petitioners were the members of the LeT stood disapproved in the light of the two judgments. Therefore, he asked the court to quash the impugned FIR lodged by the CTD for being unlawful and of no legal effect.

The other petitioners include Muhammad Ayub Sheikh, Zafar Iqbal, Syed Luqman Ali Shah, Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki, Abdul Salam, Abdul Ghaffar and Abdul Qudoos Shahid.

The federation through the secretary ministry of interior, Punjab government through home department and the SHO CTD regional headquarters Lahore have been made party in the petition.

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2019