United Nations: In a veiled attack on Pakistan, India has told the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that Dawood Ibrahim’s illegitimate activities from a ‘safe haven’ which refuses to acknowledge even his existence pose a real danger. New Delhi has now called for a focused attention to address the threats by the ‘D-Company’, the ‘Jaish-e-Mohammad’ (JeM) and the ‘Lashkar-e-Taiba’ (LeT).
Terrorist organisations are increasingly involved in lucrative criminal activities such as trading in natural resources and human trafficking to raise funds, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin said Tuesday.
Similarly, criminal groups are joining hands with terrorists and are providing services such as counterfeiting, illicit financing, arms dealing, drug trafficking and smuggling terrorists across borders, Akbaruddin said at the Security Council debate on ‘Threats to International Peace and Security: Linkages between International Terrorism and Organised Crime’.
“In our own region, we have seen the mutation of Dawood Ibrahim’s criminal syndicate into a terrorist network known as the ‘D-Company’. The D-Company’s illegitimate economic activities may be little known outside our region, but for us, such activities as gold smuggling, counterfeit currency, as well as arms and drug trafficking from a safe haven that declines to acknowledge even his existence, are a real and present danger,” Akbaruddin said.
Akbaruddin emphasised that the success of a collective action to ‘denude’ the ISIS is a pointer that the Council’s ‘focussed attention can and does yield results’.
A similar degree of interest in addressing the threats posed by proscribed individuals, such as Dawood Ibrahim and his D-Company, as well as proscribed entities, including the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), listed as affiliates of al-Qaeda, under the 1267 sanctions regime, will serve all of us well,” Akbaruddin pointed out.
Pakistan’s Foreign Office last week said ‘Dawood Ibrahim is not in Pakistan’, a day after a UK court was informed that the underworld don wanted for the deadly coordinated bombings in Mumbai in 1993 is currently in exile in the country.
During the ongoing extradition trial of 51-year-old Jabir Moti, a ‘high-ranking member of D-Company’, Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London heard that Dawood is currently in exile in Pakistan.
“The head of D Company is Dawood Ibrahim, an Indian Muslim currently in exile in Pakistan. Dawood Ibrahim and his brother and top lieutenant, Anis Ibrahim, have been fugitives from India since 1993, when ‘D-Company’ was implicated in coordinated bombings in Mumbai that killed more than 200 people,” according to a US Attorney’s affidavit for extradition read out by Moti’s barrister Edward Fitzgerald.
External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar has said many times that Pakistan’s stand that Dawood is not present in the country exposed its ‘double standards’.
Akbaruddin stressed that terrorism and organised crime are both ‘manifestly malicious organisms drawing sustenance from the same deadly swamp’.
“At times, they co-exist; at other times, they cooperate; and in instances, they converge. As the world becomes more interconnected, these menacing networks are becoming increasingly intertwined,” Akbaruddin pointed out.
Akbaruddin asserted that this flow of resources, meant to produce violence and terror, needs to be stopped by states working together.
PTI
