LAHORE: The Punjab government has included names of Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and one of his close aides, Qazi Kashif, in the fourth schedule of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA).

Hafiz Saeed’s name has also been put on the exit control list.

A senior police officer privy to the development told Dawn on Friday that the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) had added their names to the list of the 1,450 ‘fourth schedulers’ on an order of the federal interior ministry.

Also read: Hafiz Saeed, 37 others seek removal from ECL

Three other men whose names were added to the list were Abdullah Obaid from Faisalabad, and Zafar Iqbal and Abdur Rehman Abid from the Markaz-i-Taiba, Muridke.

The five men were identified by the interior ministry as “active members of the Jamaatud Dawa and Falah-i-Insaniyat”. The ministry directed the CTD to “move and take necessary action” against them.

The names of three prisoners transferred to Pakistan from Guantanamo Bay had also been placed on the list, he said. However, he refused to share the identity of anyone other than the JuD leaders.

Editorial: Crackdown on JuD

Hafiz Saeed was placed under house arrest on Jan 30 amid an angry uproar from his party and political allies. This was followed by an extraordinary development in which the army supported the step taken by the civilian government, and it was viewed by many as a sign of changing security priorities.

The Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 empowers the government to mark a person as “proscribed”, and to place that person on the fourth schedule on an ex-parte basis.

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2017