Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) issued an arrest warrant for international terrorist Mohammed Masood Azhar Alvi on Thursday.

The Gujranwala-based ATC was approached by the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) of the Punjab police. The CTD placed charges of terror financing against some members of the terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) formed by Azhar. The charge sheet filed by the CTD has culminated in the issuance of an arrest warrant for Azhar, who was listed as a global terrorist by the UN Security Council’s 1267 sanctions sub-committee in May 2019.

Azhar has been previously imprisoned for terrorist activities when he was involved with another terrorist organization, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. However, Azhar was released in 1999 in an exchange for 155 hostages on a hijacked Indian Airlines flight, which was landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Upon his release, he founded JeM. The terrorist organization has been found to be linked with financing and supporting al-Qaeda, the Taliban and in recent times has claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings in India-administered Kashmir.

Effective reprisals against terrorist financing and money laundering by the ATC are not only an affirmation to global demands for Azhar’s arrest but are also beneficial for Pakistan. The country is set to have a follow up assessment for its ratings by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog. In the lead-up to its reassessment, Pakistan has been subject to increased monitoring by the FATF since its greylisting by the organization in June 2018.

Azhar is reported to be residing in a “safe place”.