Mama gets five years in jail for terror funding, money laundering

An anti-terrorism court (ATC) on Saturday sentenced a former sector incharge of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Raeesuddin, alias Raees Mama, to five years in prison on charges of funding terrorism and money laundering in the days when the party held sway over Karachi.

The ATC-XVI judge also ordered the convict to pay a collective fine of Rs100,000 to be deposited to the government’s treasury. In case of default, he will have to spend another year in jail.

Mama was arrested by the Interpol in Malaysia in December 2017 following the issuance of his red warrants by the Pakistani government, and was brought back to the country in March 2018, according to a report of the Financial Monitoring Unit.

He was on the exit control list since 2015 on the recommendation of the intelligence agencies as the federal government started a crackdown on terrorism in the city. He is believed to have been a close aide of Hammad Siddiqui, who used to handle Karachi for the MQM.

The prosecution maintained that the accused was involved in raising funds for terrorism through extortion as well as in money laundering between 2006 and 2015. He was employed as a grade-17 purchase officer at a district municipal corporation and also served as the MQM’s Korangi sector incharge. The prosecution presented four witnesses against the accused, all of whom corroborated the claims. The accused pleaded innocence and did not present any witness in his defence. His attorney argued that the case was based on the salary account of the accused that did not have outside transactions of more than Rs200,000 to Rs300,000.

Concluding the trial, the judge observed that the prosecution presented trustworthy evidence and the failure of the accused to give defence had proved the case beyond any reasonable shadow of a doubt. He gave the accused five years for money laundering and the same for funding arrangements. Both the sentences will run concurrently.

The case had been registered under sections 11-H (fund raising) and 11-N (punishment for use and possession of funds for the purpose of and money laundering), read with Section 7 (punishment for acts of terrorism) of the Anti-Terrorism Act, at the Counter Terrorism Department police station.

Raees has 18 cases still pending against him accusing him of involvement in felonies such as murders, rioting, shoot-outs with the police and possession of illegal weapons.