Five AQIS militants handed down jail terms.

LAHORE -- The Gujranwala Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) handed down on Thursday 16 year imprisonment each to five Al Qaeda militants for terror financing and keeping explosives.

The punishment was handed down on Thursday after trial in a case registered and investigated by the CTD.

The court found Abdullah Umair, Ahmadur Rehman, Asim Akbar Saeed, Muhammad Yaqoob and Muhammad Yousaf guilty of the offences.

Each convict was handed down five years in prison for terrorism financing, seven years for keeping explosives, three years for supporting proscribed Al Qaeda and one year imprisonment for keeping literature of Al Qaeda.

The personal properties of convicts were confiscated and fines were also imposed on them.

'It is a very important verdict where Al Qaeda operatives have been convicted after terrorism financing charges proved true against the convicts,' a spokesperson for the CTD Punjab said.

Convicted terrorists were running a media cell of the AQIS in Gujranwala.

They were arrested in a joint operation by the CTD Punjab and an intelligence agency in December 2019, he said, causing a major blow to the terrorist organisation.

'The cell was also involved in financing terrorist operations of the AQIS,' he said, adding that officers of both agencies (the CTD and the ISI) had been working on the cell for quite some time on the basis of intelligence reports.

'The AQIS had been running its propaganda campaign online and physically from a secret location in Karachi,' the spokesperson said.

After focus of both the law-enforcement agencies (LEAs) on the terrorists in Karachi, they had shifted the set-up to Gujranwala.

As LEAs continued their surveillance, they arrested these terrorists (important members of the AQIS) when they planned a terrorist activity there. Asim Akbar, alias Saeed, alias Baba, alias Bazurg, alias Jaffer, was a resident of Lahore. During investigations, the CTD Punjab found that he had been associated with Al Qaeda since 2005. He was in charge of...