File photo: Hafiz Saeed is showered with flower petals as he walks to court before a Pakistani court ordered his release from house arrest in Lahore, Pakistan November 22, 2017. Reuters/Mohsin Raza/File Photo
Lahore, Pakistan: A Pakistani court has jailed Hafiz Saeed, founder of the group blamed by the United States and India for a deadly 2008 attack in India, for 31 years in connection with terrorism financing, court documents showed.
Saeed was found guilty of multiple breaches in two cases but it was not immediately clear how much jail time the new verdict would entail given his current incarceration and the fact that his sentences run concurrently.
"The sentences awarded to convict Hafiz Muhammad Saeed run concurrently of this case and of previously awarded, if any," a the court said in an order, dated April 7, that was seen by Reuters on Friday.
Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, is already in jail having been found guilty on multiple similar charges in 2020.
Saeed has been arrested and released several times over the past decade. He denies any involvement with militancy, including the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which gunmen who slipped into Mumbai by boat from Pakistan killed 160 people, including Americans.
The United States offered a reward of $10 million for information leading to his conviction.
The latest sentencing comes as Pakistan tries to avoid blacklisting by the global dirty money watchdog the Financial Action Task Force, which judges a country’s ability to combat illicit financing, including to militant organisations.
