Pak freezes bank accounts of 5,100 terror suspects, including JeM chief Azhar
Head of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, Masood Azhar is believed to be in the “protective custody” of security agencies since India blamed the JeM for a terror attack on Pathankot airbase in January.
Pakistani authorities have frozen bank accounts with more than Rs 400 million belonging to some 5,100 terror suspects, including Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar, according to a media report on Monday.
Among those whose accounts were frozen by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) are 1,200 suspects included in “category A” of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997, which covers terrorists who pose an exceptional or high risk.
The 5,100 suspects are all listed in the Fourth Schedule of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997, The News daily quoted unnamed officials as saying. Azhar was included in “category A”, officials of the interior ministry and SBP said.
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Azhar is believed to be in the “protective custody” of security agencies since India blamed the JeM for a terror attack on Pathankot airbase in January.
“Following a request of the ministry of interior, we have frozen accounts of all top suspected terrorists, including Masood Azhar, son of Allah Bux,” a senior official of SBP, who is part of a team monitoring the freezing of the bank accounts, told The News.
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Ihsan Ghani, national coordinator of the National Counter-Terrorism Authority (NACTA), confirmed that more than 5,000 bank accounts of suspects had been frozen by the SBP. “These accounts hold a net amount worth Rs 400 million,” he said.
Official documents showed the authorities had blocked the bank accounts of 3,078 suspects from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the tribal areas, 1,443 from Punjab, 226 from Sindh, 193 from Balochistan, 106 from Gilgit-Baltistan, 27 from the Islamabad Capital Territory and 26 from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
Prominent suspects whose accounts were frozen include Maulana Abdul Aziz of Islamabad’s radical Lal Masjid, Ahmed Ludhianvi of the Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal Jamaat, Matiur Rehman of al-Qaeda Pakistan, Qari Ehsan of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
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