ISLAMABAD: Fazalur Rehman Khalil, founder of the proscribed group Harkatul Mujahideen and current head of the Ansarul Umma – which purports to be a religious welfare organisation – has revealed plans to challenge his recent inclusion in a US government watch list.

In a press conference held here on Tuesday, he came out strongly against what he termed “allegations levelled against him by the US government” and vowed to challenge them in court.

In a recent move, the US Department of Treasury put Mr Khalil and two other men – Sheikh Mohammad Naeem and Umair Naeem – on its Specially Designated Nationals List.

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According to the list, all three men are linked to the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

This list contains the names of individuals, groups, and entities, such as terrorists and narcotics traffickers.

Those who make it to the list usually have their assets blocked and US citizens are generally prohibited from dealing with them.

“I’ll file a case in Pakistani courts, and if required, I will file a case in an international court of law as well to prove that Washington has levelled baseless allegations against me,” he said. He was of the view that the US had labelled him a terrorist simply to please Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“There are no cases against me anywhere in the world, so how I can be declared a terrorist... no one has the right to declare anyone terrorist without providing evidence,” he maintained.

“This is strange. When we mujahideen were fighting the Afghan war, we were heroes for America. Now the US has started calling us terrorists,” he said.

“If Osama bin Laden had declared war on China, the US would have dubbed him a hero too,” he said.

He insisted that US President Barack Obama, Indian Prime Minister Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were the “biggest terrorists in the world” and had killed innocent Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2014