Moving a step closer to freedom, Mumbai attack mastermind and JuD chief, Hafiz Saeed, has been freed from the charges of terrorism. The move comes after the Pakistan government withdrew the charges against him.
On 31 January, Saeed and his four aides were detained by the Punjab government for 90 days under preventative detention under the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997. Since then, they were under house arrest since then.
An official of the Home Department of Punjab government told a three-member federal judicial review board headed by Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan of the Supreme Court that the government did not require the extension of Saeed and his four accomplices’ detention anymore. Charges of terrorism have not been included in the new order.
“The provincial government does not require extension to the detention of Saeed, his aides – Abdullah Ubaid, Malik Zafar Iqbal, Abdul Rehman Abid and Qazi Kashif Hussain – under the anti-terrorism law. Therefore it requests the board to accept withdrawal of extension to detention of Jamaat-u-Dawah leaders,” he said on Friday.
