United Nations: China has blocked at the United Nations a proposal by the US and India to blacklist Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist Sajid Mir. This is Beijing’s third such move in four months. Mir is one of the wanted terrorists of India and the main conspirator of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Beijing is learned to have blocked a US proposal on Thursday to blacklist Mir as a global terrorist under the UN Security Council’s 1267 Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee. India has supported this proposal. It is proposed to attach Mir’s properties and impose travel and arms restrictions on him.
Mir is India’s most wanted terrorist and the US has placed a $5 million bounty on him for his role in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. In June this year, he was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison by an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan in a terrorism financing case. Pakistani authorities had earlier claimed that Mir was dead, but Western countries were not convinced and asked for proof of his death. This became a major issue in Pakistan’s progress in the crackdown on terrorists by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) last year.
The US State Department said, “Mir was the operator of Lashkar-e-Taiba’s activities for the attacks, he played an important role in the planning, preparation, and attack.” Last month, China blocked at the United Nations a proposal by the US and India to blacklist Abdul Rauf Azhar, brother of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar and a member of a Pakistan-based terror outfit. Abdul Rauf Azhar was born in Pakistan in 1974 and was banned by the US in December 2010. Pakistan’s ally China has been repeatedly creating obstacles in the way of blacklisting Pakistani terrorists under the United Nations Sanctions Committee.
In June this year, China blocked a joint proposal of India and the US to blacklist Pakistani terrorist Abdul Rehman Makki. America has put Makki on the terrorist list. Makki is a relative of Hafiz Saeed. The US State Department said Mir has been a senior LeT member since almost 2001. He was in charge of LeT’s foreign activities from 2006 to 2011 and carried out several terrorist attacks at the behest of the group.
In addition, he allegedly plotted terrorist attacks against a newspaper and its employees in Denmark between 2008 and 2009. Mir was tried in the US in April 2011 for his role in the Mumbai attacks. In August 2012, the US Treasury Department listed Mir as a global terrorist. According to information available on the State Department website, “Mir is on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists. It is believed that he lives in Pakistan.”
