Islamabad: A Pakistani lawyer has approached the Lahore High Court (LHC) for the quashing of the First Information Reports (FIRs) against Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Mohammed Saeed and 65 others.
The petition, moved by a top JuD leader, Malik Zafar Iqbal, is scheduled to be heard on August 22. The federal government, Punjab government and the regional headquarter of the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) have been made party in the plea.
According to the petition, the FIRs registered were “without lawful authority and of no legal effect”. It further stated that the property under question was for a mosque and was being used for the said purpose.
The petition said that the property “is not and has not ever (sic) been used for terror financing as there is no tangible evidence on record to support such bold (sic) allegations”, adding: “Therefore, the 23 FIRs listed were without lawful authority.”
In addition to it, the plea said that the FIRs, describing the petitioner as the head of the proscribed militant outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, were “factually and legally incorrect”.
On July 3, the top leadership of the outlawed JuD, including Hafiz Saeed and Abdul Rehman Makki, were booked in nearly two dozen cases under the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.
