The news of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar’s death was received with much sorrow in Pakistan’s Islamist groups as the Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) announced on Friday to hold funeral prayers in absentia for the deceased militant leader while the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam held a condolence reference in Quetta to mourn his death.
The JuD, headed by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, announced that it would hold funeral prayers for the deceased Taliban leader in a Islamabad mosque on Saturday (today) in which the group’s central leadership, including Hafiz Saeed, will participate.
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. 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 militant group accused of orchestrating attacks in Indian-held Kashmir and India itself, 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.
Meanwhile, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam—Ideological, a pro-Taliban political party, held a condolence reference and a public meeting in Quetta to mourn Omar’s demise.
Similar public meetings will be organised in Quetta and other districts of Balochistan, said Maulana Abdul Qadir Looni, provincial chief of the JUI-Ideological, while addressing a 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 Mansour and his Taliban Shura.
