An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan has sentenced hardline Islamist cleric Hafiz Mohammad Saeed to 11 years in jail for financing terrorist operations.
The man accused of masterminding the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks that killed 161 people is to serve two five-and-a-half prison terms concurrently.
Saeed has been wanted by India for years, and is designated as a global terrorist by both the UN and the US, which has a $10m bounty on his head. He's the founder of one of Pakistan's largest militant groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
So why has it taken so long to put him behind bars – and will he stay there? The answer is complicated, not least by the fact that Saeed is widely known to have close links with the Pakistani military.
Why punish him now?
The answer may lie in Pakistan's growing international isolation since the mid-2000s, its worsening economic woes and more recently a threat of being blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the international terror financing and money laundering watchdog.
Significantly, Saeed's conviction comes a week before the Paris-based FATF discusses Pakistan's progress in curbing terror financing.
Pakistan, which has long denied supporting militants to further…
