PHC grants bail to terror financing suspect.

PESHAWAR -- A Peshawar High Court bench has granted bail to a suspect arrested by Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) on charges of terror financing.

A single-member bench of Justice Ahmad Ali accepted bail petition of the suspect, Mohammad Shafiq Hakimi, an Afghan national presently residing in Peshawar, on condition of furnishing two sureties of Rs100,000 each.

The petitioner claims that his case was of double jeopardy as he was earlier arrested by the Customs Department and subsequently after he was released on bail he was again arrested by CTD.

Advocate Shabbir Hussain Gigyani appeared for the petitioner and contended that Pakistan had been placed in 'grey list' by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international watchdog against money laundering and financing of terrorism.

He said that owing to same reasons, the government tasked CTD to register FIRs in cases wherein money transactions were involved irrespective whether those were related to terror financing or not. He added that the move was meant just to show number of FIRs and figures of the questionable amount to FATF for removing Pakistan from the said list.

Petitioner claims he faces double jeopardy as earlier he was arrested by Customs dept

The counsel argued that CTD had now been getting details from Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and Customs of all the previous registered cases under anti-money laundering law, foreign exchange regulation and Customs Act and registering second FIRs against the same persons for same transactions.

He pointed out that his client was arrested by Customs officials at Torkham on charges of smuggling US $100,000 and Qatri Riyals170,000. He added that the petitioner was granted bail in that case and subsequently CTD registered another FIR against him, accusing him of terror financing.

Mr...