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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Two NGOs’ head charged with terror financing

By Akhtar Amin
July 19, 2019

PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) has charged the chairperson of Peshawar-based non-government organisations and her parents with terror financing.

As per the first information report submitted in the anti-terrorism court, Peshawar along with other supporting documents, the CTD Peshawar claimed that the woman is the chairperson of two NGOs: Aware Girls and Seeds for Peace.

CTD Inspector Muhammad Ilyas charged Gulalai Ismail under Section 11-N of Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) 1997 on December 7, 2018, which deals offences related to terror financing.

The CTD also charged Gulalai’s parents, Ismail and his wife Uzlifat Ismail, residents of the Swabi district, with huge illegal transactions in their bank accounts from foreign countries, including India, and used for terror financing.

In the report, the CTD claimed that the accused Gulalai Ismail, who is also an activist of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), received huge funds in millions in the name of NGOs from foreign countries and then used the funds for assisting a terrorist organisation.

In the report, it was claimed that these activities of the accused had earned a bad name for the country as well.

In the FIR, it was stated that parents of the accused were also interrogated about the transactions, but they did not give satisfactory answers about the transactions on their bank accounts.

An official of the CTD told The News that Gulalai Ismail is absconder in the case.

He said that her parents had filed pre-arrest bail petition in the anti-terrorism court No 2 in the case, in which the court sought the record of the case and fixed July 22 for hearing in the petition.

Gulalai Ismail, a 32-year-old Pakistani human rights activist hailing from Swabi, has been awarded the 2015 Commonwealth Youth Award for Excellence in Development Work.

In 2017, she was awarded the Reach All Women in War Anna Politkovskaya Award. The CTD had set up a Counter-Terrorism Finance Unit last year to probe suspicious transactions by NGOs and individuals.

Pakistan has already accelerated steps against terror financing to avoid being blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force.