After China once again shielded a terrorist based in Pakistan from international sanctions, India has played at the United Nations General Assembly an audio of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative who coordinated the 26/11 carnage in Mumbai from a control room in Karachi.
“The mastermind of the Mumbai terror attacks Sajid Mir was listed as a proscribed terrorist under the national laws of India, of United States and of several other countries,” Prakash Gupta, a senior diplomat representing New Delhi, said while participating in a conference at the UN General Assembly on counterterrorism.
“But, when the proposal for listing Sajid Mir did not get through the Global Listings of the UN Security Council Sanctions Regime, despite several member states co-sponsoring it, we have righteous reasons to believe that something is genuinely wrong with the global counter-terrorism architecture,” added Gupta, after playing the audio-tape of the LeT operative directing the 26/11 terrorists on phone to hunt down foreigners at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai and kill them indiscriminately.
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Beijing this week blocked a proposal moved by New Delhi and Washington DC to get the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to designate Sajid Mir as a terrorist and impose sanctions on him.
China, one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, had in September 2022 placed a “technical hold” on the proposal to designate him as an individual linked to Al Qaeda, Taliban and Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) and to put him under full-spectrum UN sanctions, including assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo.
“If we cannot get established terrorists who have been banned across global landscapes proscribed by the United Nations for petty geopolitical interests, then we really do NOT have the genuine political will to sincerely fight this challenge of terrorism,” said Gupta, tacitly slamming China for shielding anti-India terrorists based in Pakistan.
Mir was involved in planning the November 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai and was in touch with the terrorists, who had sneaked into India from Pakistan and carried out the attack. He was in the ‘control room’ the LeT had set up in Karachi to guide the terrorists in real time to kill 166 people and injure many others in a three-day-carnage, with several foreigners, including the citizens of the US and Israel, being among the victims.
“Fifteen years after the Mumbai terror attacks, its masterminds have not yet been brought to justice. Some of them continue to roam scot-free – with full state hospitality,” Gupta said indirectly slamming Pakistan.
Mir was arrested in Pakistan last year in connection with a terror financing case when the government of the country was trying desperately to be removed from the blacklist of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)
The FATF is an intergovernmental organisation to combat terror financing and money laundering.
Beijing had in the past blocked several proposals moved by India and other nations at the UNSC to impose sanctions on the terrorists based in Pakistan. It had similarly used “technical holds” for years to block New Delhi’s repeated moves to get the UNSC to impose sanctions on Masood Azhar, the leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammed based in Pakistan and the mastermind of several terrorist attacks in India, including the one on the paramilitary personnel in Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir on February 14, 2019.
China had finally in May 2019 allowed the Security Council to move against the radical cleric based in Pakistan. It had similarly allowed the Security Council to impose full spectrum UN sanctions – travel ban, asset freeze and arms embargo – on the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Tayyiba’s deputy chief, Abdul Rehman Makki, of course after blocking the moves initially.
China had earlier also blocked India’s moves to get the UN sanctions imposed on the LeT commander Zaki Ur Rehman Lakhvi and the Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin – both based in Pakistan.