Islamabad: Banned terror outfit Jamaatud Dawa has expressed anger as India welcomed the US announcement of a 10 million dollar reward on its chief Hafiz Saeed, and has said that it will initiate legal consultations to determine if it can challenge the bounty in international courts.
“Our legal experts will soon meet to consider if it is possible, we will use this option, though we don’t take this seriously,” JuD Information Secretary Hafiz Muhammad Masood said.
Masood, however, did not explicitly say whether the JuD would also challenge the decision in an American court.
“We don’t expect justice from them. For Americans, they consider a person innocent unless proven guilty, but for Muslims, they think of them as guilty unless proven innocent,” The Express Tribune quoted Masood, as saying.
According to the report, law expert Ahmer Bilal Soofi said that the JuD would have to move an American court if it wants to challenge the decision.
Meanwhile, India welcomed the announcement, saying ‘it reflects the commitment of India and the US to bringing the perpetrators of the Mumbai terrorist attack to justice.’
The JuD chief railed against India on Tuesday, and said that the US had slapped him with the bounty because of a campaign he was leading to stop the Pakistani government from reopening NATO supply routes to Afghanistan.
“The action against me is also an act of terrorism and America is doing it at the behest of India,” the paper quoted Saeed, as saying.
“The movement that we have organised after the formation of Defence of Pakistan Council is becoming very effective and it is impacting Parliament’s decision about NATO supplies and this factor is disturbing for America and that is why they have announced a bounty on me,” he added.
ANI
