US places two Pakistani groups in the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations
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WASHINGTON - US Department of State has placed two Pakistani organisations as the terrorists groups.
State Department on Monday identified Milli Muslim League (MML) and Tehreek-e-Azadi-e-Kashmir (TAK) as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) affiliates and also named seven members of the MML leadership as LeT activists who were acting on behalf of LeT, according to a report <link>by a private media outlet.
The State Department described the MML and the TAK as LeT ‘aliases’ and added their names to its lists of Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTO) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT).
The designations clearly undermine MML’s effort to get itself registered with the Election Commission of Pakistan as a political party and contest the 2018 general elections. It will be difficult for the Pakistani government to ignore the designations and register MML as a political party, as it would be seen as an act of direct confrontation with the United States.
These designations “seek to deny LeT the resources it needs to plan and carry out further terrorist attacks,” the State Department said in a statement issued in Washington.
Concurrently with Monday’s State Department actions, the US Department of the Treasury designated seven members of the MML central leadership body for acting on behalf of LeT: Saifullah Khalid, Muzammil Iqbal Hashimi, Muhammad Harris Dar, Tabish Qayyum, Fayyaz Ahmad, Faisal Nadeem, and Muhammad Ehsan.
Monday’s actions notify the US public and the international community that TAK and MML are aliases of LeT. Terrorism designations expose and isolate organisations and individuals and deny them access to the US financial system.
