Hatemongering his way into Pak Court

Islamabad: Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA), one of the highest ranked lawyer body in the judicial ranks, invited Hafiz Muhammad Saeed – a man declared a global terrorist, and whose organization, Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD), has also been on the global terrorist list as a banned outfit – to a seminar in the Lahore High Court, where the JuD chief was seen blasting venom against the US and India.

The recent event shows why Pakistani courts have been known to being biased over many critical cases, and using the power of the black coat and tie to their own governed blatant violation of rules and regulations. Many lawyer entities within the country’s judicial system are seen siding with anti-Judicial activities, abusing, torturing and manhandling opposition claimants in and outside the court like gangsters.

Pakistan’s Lahore High court holds a special place in this regard, as it has witnessed the most blatant violations committed by its own lawyers, who have governed inhumane attacks on locals, like the recent death of a woman by stoning toned to death in the court’s premises in broad day light.

While Hafiz Saeed was once again given a chance to bash India, during his address at the Lahore High Court. The man behind the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, Saeed is considered one of India’s most wanted terrorists.

Previously, in May, Saeed was invited as chief guest at the Lahore High Court Bar Association, during which he accused India of sending troops to Afghanistan to fill the vacuum created by the departure of US forces. He said, “India has sent 25,000 soldiers to Afghanistan and more are on their way and the Indian forces will achieve its design against Pakistan sitting in Afghanistan. The presence of Indian forces in Afghanistan is a great threat to Pakistan’s integrity.”

Saeed claimed the US was behind the deployment of Indian forces on Pakistan’s western border, “The US wants to teach a lesson to Pakistan by patronizing India. America has also wanted to target Pakistan’s atomic programme while sitting in Afghanistan, but it miserably failed because of the sacrifices of Muslims.”

Saeed has said that many CIA agents like Raymond Davis have been working in Pakistan with the agenda to destabilize the country. He also claims that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during the election campaign, had asked Pakistani Hindus to migrate to India if they did not feel safe in Pakistan. But, they refused to do so and were also extremely satisfied buy the relief work being carried out by JuD’s workers.

Hafiz Saeed has said that the Operation Zarb-e-Azb is an operation to win the hearts and minds of the Waziristan people. He paid rich tributes to the people of Waziristan for refusing American aid.
“I salute the people of Waziristan for refusing to receive any aid from the United States”, he said. He praised the Pakistani Armed Forces for carrying out the operation against the terrorists in the North Waziristan Agency (NWA). He said that by standing by the Pakistani Army in this operation against the terrorists, the people of Waziristan have done a great service to the nation.

In 1985, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed and Zafar Iqbal formed the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (Organization for Preaching, or JuD) as a small missionary group dedicated to promoting an Ahl-e-Hadith version of Islam. In the next year, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakvi merged his group of anti-Soviet jihadists with the JuD to form the Markaz-ud Dawa-wal-Irshad (Center for Preaching and Guidance, or MDI). The MDI had 17 founders originally, and notable among them was Abdullah Azzam.

The Lashkir-e- Taiba (LeT) was formed in Afghanistan’s Kunar province in 1990 and gained prominence in the early 1990s as a military offshoot of MDI.  MDI’s primary concerns were dawah and the LeT focused on jihad although the members did not distinguish between the two groups’ functions. According to Hafiz Saeed, “Islam propounds both dawa[h] and jihad. Both are equally important and inseparable. Since our life revolves around Islam, therefore both dawa and jihad are essential; we cannot prefer one over the other.”

Most of these training camps were located in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and many were shifted to PoK for the sole purpose of training volunteers for the Kashmir Jihad. From 1991 onwards, militancy surged in Kashmir, as many Lashkar-e-Taiba volunteers were infiltrated into Kashmir from PoK with the help of the Pakistan Army and ISI. As of 2010, the degree of control that Pakistani intelligence retains over LeT’s operations is not known.