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Canada blacklists Harkat-ul-Mujahideen

Ajit Jain in Toronto

Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Mujahideen is included in the list of 22 terrorist organisations and individuals on whom substantial financial curbs have been placed by Canadian Finance Minister Paul Martin.

He announced new regulations on Wednesday that prohibits Canadians from raising funds for these organisations and individuals, and if they defy they face up to five years in prison.

"We will destroy (the terrorists') capacity to wield military might against innocent people. We are going to rip from their grasp the capacity to finance that violence," Martin said.

Dr Rita Tremblay, an Indo-Canadian head of Political Science department at Montreal's McGill University, who recently returned from Pakistan, told rediff.com that HuM has now a very large following and is on top of the Pakistan-based organisations committing acts of terror in Kashmir.

Until now, Canada had no prohibition on raising money for terrorist groups. The new sanctions, called as an interim measure, form part of the regulations under Canada's Untied Nations Act.

Ottawa is, however, drafting a comprehensive anti-terrorism bill, that will be tabled in the House of Commons within a couple of weeks to empower the government to seize funds of these terrorist organisations and groups.

So far, the Canadian government has been reticent in formulating any list of terrorist groups and individuals and in fact, organisations that are termed terrorists in other countries, were not barred from raising funds in Canada.

There are affiliates of LTTE raising funds in the country. Even Babbar Khalsa till recently had a charitable status in Canada.

Minister for Foreign Minister John Manley, who is now the head of a new anti-terrorism cabinet committee, said his main worry is not that the list (of terrorist organisations) could mistakenly include legitimate organisations, but rather that it won't sweep up enough terrorist groups.

Other organisations included in the list of terrorist groups include Abu Sayyaf Group of Philippines; Armed Islamic Group of Algeria; Al-Jihad of Egypt and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

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