JuD to hold vicarious funeral for Mullah Omar in Islamabad
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ISLAMABAD/QUETTA: Jamaatud Dawa (JuD), a self-proclaimed charity working in Pakistan, announced holding vicarious funeral prayers for the deceased Taliban chief tomorrow afternoon in an Islamabad mosque.
According to JuD spokesman Asif Khursheed, the group’s central leadership, including Hafiz Saeed, will attend the funeral.
Mullah Omar’s death was officially announced by Afghanistan on Wednesday, after a BBC report had cited unnamed Afghan sources saying Omar had died 2 to 3 years ago.
A day later, the Afghan Taliban also confirmed their chief’s death saying “his [Mullah Omar's] health condition deteriorated in the last two weeks of his illness” and “not for a single day did he go to Pakistan,” contradicting Afghanistan’s official stance that Omar had died in Karachi.
JuD is a controversial organisation, which was added to the banned outfits list by Pakistani authorities at the start of the year, along with the Haqqani network.
Take a look: Haqqani network and JuD banned.
The US State Department last year named JuD as a “foreign terrorist organisation,” a status that freezes any assets it has under US jurisdiction.
The group calls itself a humanitarian charity but is widely seen as a front organisation for the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), a Pakistan-based group accused of orchestrating attacks in India, including the 2008 Mumbai attack that killed 166 people.
The JuD is also listed as a terror outfit by the United Nations and its chief (Hafiz Saeed) has a $10 million US government bounty against him.
JUI-I holds public meeting to mourn Omar’s death
Meanwhile, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam—Ideological, a pro-Taliban political party, on Friday held a condolence reference and a public meeting to mourn the demise of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar in Balochistan’s capital city.
Similar public meetings to condole the demise of Omar are set to be organised in Quetta and other districts of Balochistan, said Maulana Abdul Qadir Looni, provincial chief of the JUI-Ideological, while addressing a crowded press conference in Quetta. Senior JUI-Ideological leaders Abdul Sattar Chishti and Qari Mehrullah were also present during the press conference.
The political party, which had a legislator each in the National Assembly and the Balochistan Assmebly in the previous governments, also announced support for Taliban's newly appointed chief, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor and his cabinet.
