Hafiz Saeed, a UN and US
designated global terrorist, has sent Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khurram
Dastgir (spelt Dastgeer by Saeed’s lawyer) a notice demanding written apology
and seeking forgiveness for calling him a terrorist and his organization
Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) a terror organization in a BBC interview.
Dastgir, in case fails to do
so, will have to face civil and criminal action in courts with a defamation
suit of Rs 100 million and a possible jail sentence upto two years, the notice
sent yesterday by Hafiz Saeed says.
Dastgir had in the interview
on 3 January said that action against Hafiz Saeed’s organizations Jamaat-ud
JuD, the front of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned terror outfit, and Falah-i-Insaniat
Foundation (FIF), was not taken under US pressure.
He said, instead, the step
was taken under Pakistan Army’s Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad after Pakistan’s own
internal assessment and serious deliberation. Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad or
operation for elimination of discord was launched in February 2017 with an aim
to eliminate the residual and latent threats of terrorism like sleeper cells
from Pakistan.
“It is not that we will take
up arms against our own country — that time has passed and these terrorists
cannot attack their own country with guns and Pakistan would now make
calculated decisions so that the children can remain safe in schools,” Dastgir
further added.
Pakistan’s Securities and
Exchange Commission has issued a directive which bars JuD, FIF and other
organizations listed by the United Nations Security Council from collecting
donations. Pakistan’s financial regulator has also prohibited people to make
donation to such proscribed organizations and individuals.
The action came soon after US
President Donald Trump’s tweet on the New Year Day saying no more US aid to
Pakistan and calling the country a liar and deceitful partner and was largely
seen as taken under US pressure.
The notice sent by Hafiz
Saeed under Section 8 of the Defamation Ordinance 2002 of Pakistan calls
comments by Dastgir in the interview falsehoods, absolutely baseless, unfounded
and intended to malign JuD and compares it with the the Edhi Foundation, a
nationwide NGO in Pakistan founded by revered philanthropist and humanitarian
Abdul Sattar Edhi, who passed away last year, and says calling members of such
an organization as persons who hit the children at school with bullets is
nothing short of a sin.
Hafiz Saeed had also served a
similar defamation notice of Rs 100 million to Pakistan’s Foreign Minister
Khawaja Asif in September 2017. The notice came after Asif called terrorists
and terror outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hafiz Saeed liabilities but decried
the US pressure to neutralize them as these very terrorists used to be the
“darling of the United States just 20 to 30 years back.”
©SantoshChaubey
