Washington: The US has designated three LeT linked Pakistanis as global terrorists to enable shutting down of the terror group’s financial network and curtail its ability to raise funds to carry out violent terrorist attacks. LeT was allegedly responsible for carrying out the 2008 Mumbai attack.
One of them was LeT commander Abdul Rehman al-Dakhil who’s named under Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) by the Department of State.
In a similar and separate move, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of USA took action yesterday to disrupt the LeT’s fundraising and support networks by designating two of the group’s financial facilitators, Hameed ul Hassan and Abdul Jabbar, under Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs).
Dakhil has been a longtime member of the US designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) and Lashkar e Taiba (LeT) and was an operational leader in attacks against India by LeT between 1997 and 2001.
Dakhil was caught in Iraq by British forces in 2004 and then he was held in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan before his transfer to Pakistan in 2014.
Dakhil restarted his work at LeT after his release from Pakistani custody. Dakhil was appointed the LeT divisional commander for the Jammu region in the year 2016.
Dakhil was reportedly senior commander in the LeT in the early 2018.
The State Department has said that the designation seeks to deny Dakhil the resources to plan and carry out terrorist attacks.
As per the designation consequences, all of his belongings such as property and interests subject to US jurisdiction are now blocked and US citizens are generally prohibited from engaging any kind of transactions with him.
“Today’s action notifies the US public and the international community that Abdul Rehman al-Dakhil has committed, or poses a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism,” the State Department said.
As per the rules, designations of terrorist individuals and groups helps exposing and isolate organisations and individuals and deny them access to the US financial system, it said.
As per the statement from Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Sigal Mandelkar, Hassan and Jabbar were considered responsible for all kinds of collection, transportation and distribution of funds to help the terror group and provide salaries to the extremists.
“Treasury’s designations not only aim to expose and shut down Lashkar-e-Taiba’s financial network, but also to curtail its ability to raise funds to carry out violent terrorist attacks,” he said.
As of now due to the designation, all property and interests in property of Hassan and Jabbar under the US jurisdiction are now blocked. US citizens are not allowed to do any transactions with him.
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