LeT chief Hafiz Saeed’s close aide Saifullah Khalid met Hamas’ new political head in Doha

Khalid and Nadeem, both aides of Hafiz Saeed, were among 7 members of LeT political front MML declared Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs) by US Treasury Dept in 2018.

File photo of Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal | Reuters/Naseem Zeitoon

New Delhi: Saifullah Khalid, a close aide of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafiz Saeed and a designated terrorist in India and the US, met Hamas’ political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal in Qatar last week.

The meeting took place in Doha, where Hamas has its political office, and comes less than a month after the assassination of Meshaal’s predecessor Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

According to sources in the Indian security establishment and reports in the Pakistani media, Khalid met Meshaal to pay his condolences on Haniyeh’s assassination. He was reportedly accompanied by Faisal Nadeem, another top-level aide of the LeT chief.

Khalid and Nadeem were among the seven members of the Milli Muslim League (MML), political front of the LeT, declared Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs) by the US Treasury Department in April 2018.

Hafiz Saeed floated MML in August 2017, after Pakistan government placed him under house arrest and banned Tehreek-e-Azadi-Jammu & Kashmir (TAJK) — political front of LeT, earlier Jamaat-ud Dawa — in a bid to escape a grey-listing by Financial Action Task Force.

Saifullah Khalid, who met the Hamas political bureau chief in Qatar, was a founding member of the Jamaat-ud Dawa and introduced as president of MML in a press conference on 8 August, 2017. Ahead of the 2018 general election in Pakistan, Khalid sought votes for MML with the promise to revive the idea of making the country an “Islamic welfare state”.

But the poll panel rejected the MML’s application to register as a political party.

The US Treasury Department had in its 2018 press note also identified Khalid as head of LeT’s Peshawar HQ, adding that he served on the Jamaat-ud Dawa’s Coordination Committee for Central Punjab Province.

The press note identified Nadeem, who accompanied Khalid to Doha, as the broadcast and publications secretary of the MML, as well as Jamaat-ud Dawa’s representative in Hyderabad in Pakistan’s Sindh province. “In mid-2017, Nadeem served as LeT’s head for Sindh Province, as well as JuD’s administrator for interior Sindh,” it added.

Hamas and Israel have been locked in a bloody war since October last year.

(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)