A UN panel on Monday removed 10 Taliban along with 35 al-Qaeda members and affiliates from its sanctions terror list after its first exhaustive review of 488 blacklisted names.
“As a result of the review of 488 names, 45 were de-listed,” said Thomas Mayr-Harting, chair of the UN Security Council panel that maintains a blacklist of individuals and entities linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Mayr-Harting said 443 names — 132 Taliban and 311 from al-Qaeda — were confirmed on the list, though a final decision on 66 of those is still pending.
Last week, five of the 10 Taliban removed from the list were named as Abdul Satar Paktin; Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad Awrang, a former Afghan envoy to the UN; Abdul Salam Zaeef, author of My life with the Taliban and two officials who are now deceased.
As part of his efforts to promote national reconciliation, Afghan President Hamid Karzai reportedly sought the removal of up to 50 former Taliban officials from the blacklist, including those of a number of persons now deceased.
The Karzai government has set conditions for peace talks with Taliban insurgents, demanding militants renounce violence, accept the Afghan Constitution and rescind ties with al-Qaeda.
Mayr-Harting’s panel, with the help of a sanctions monitoring team, spent 18 months reviewing the list. The Austrian envoy noted that although a total of eight deceased individuals were de-listed, 30 others remain on the list.
“It’s not easy to get dead people off the list,” he said. “We have to have convincing proof that they are really dead and also we have to have information on what happened to their assets and this in many cases takes some time.”
Among the al-Qaeda-linked entities de-listed were Bank al Taqwa Limited, four Barakaat firms based in the US, the Somali International Relief Organization based in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the Swedish-based Somali network.
The UN blacklist was established under UN Security Council Resolution 1267, adopted in October 1999 to oversee implementation of sanctions imposed on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan for its support of Osama bin Laden’s extremist network.
Under the resolution, UN member states are required to impose travel bans, an asset freeze and an arms embargo on any individual or entity associated with al-Qaeda, bin Laden or the Taliban.
De-listing requires unanimous approval from all 15 members of the Security Council’s sanctions panel.
RSS