UN slaps sanctions on Jamaatul Ahrar

ISLAMABAD: The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) slapped sanctions on the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) splinter group Jamaatul Ahrar (JuA), in a move welcomed by the Pakistani government on Friday.

Pakistan after proscribing this terrorist group had proposed this listing of the JuA which is based in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province and has over the years created havoc inside Pakistan while carrying out terrorist attacks.

“Pakistan welcomes the listing of Jamaatul Ahrar by the UN Security Council’s 1267 Sanctions Committee,” spokesman at the Foreign Office said in a statement.

On Thursday, the spokesman had pointed to safe sanctuaries provided to several terrorist groups inside Afghanistan, many of which launched attacks inside Pakistan from its western borders. The JUA was already designated as Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the United States. It was the JUA which had claimed responsibility for the terror attack on Lahore's Mall Road, which claimed 13 lives and left over 100 people injured.

Earlier, this terrorist group was responsible for the Easter Sunday attack on the Gulshan-e-Iqbal amusement park in Lahore, where nearly a hundred lives were taken and hundreds injured.

Pakistan had taken up the presence of the JuA inside Afghanistan with the Afghan government with the United Nations and European Commission (UN&EC) Additional Secretary Tasnim Aslam saying that Pakistan has "grave concern about the continuing terrorist attacks on Pakistani soil by the terrorist outfit JuA (operating) from its sanctuaries inside Afghanistan”.

In fact, Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa had clearly told Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the Nato head in Kabul that Pakistani terrorists should be handed over to them in the wake of devastating terrorist attacks that had taken place in Pakistan.

Earlier this year, the Pakistan Army had claimed that it had destroyed four militant hideouts across the Afghan border which were training camps of JuA and destroyed the compound and four other hideouts of suspected terrorists.