United Nations: India has taken strong exception to a report by a UN monitor falsely projecting that wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim is based in India and warned that such actions cause the organisation “tremendous harm”.
Raghoo Puri, a first secretary in India’s UN Mission, Wednesday (local time), accused Ben Saul, the Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights, of “incompetence” in putting “particularly glaring inaccuracies” in his July report.
Special rapporteurs are not paid directly by the UN and are supposed to work independently of it.
According to a database created by the watchdog group, UN Watch, Saul has received $150,000 from China.
A professor of international law at the University of Sydney and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Saul received a total of $1.7 million, according to UN Watch.
The other contributors include his university, three universities in the US, and Switzerland and Spain.
His report described Dawood Ibrahim as the leader of the “India-based” D-Company criminal gang with terrorist ties, and said that the Security Council sanctioned him for association with al-Qaeda.
Puri said, “Read in isolation, this line paints a very different picture from the actual reality.”
However, “this organisation (D-Company) and its listed leader, Dawood Ibrahim, have been wanted in India for terror attacks since 1993”.
Saul has refused to note this fact, which “is clearly written in the narrative summary of reasons of listing under the 1267 sanctions regime” by the Security Council, Puri said.
Saul did not clarify that Dawood Ibrahim lives outside India and is wanted by New Delhi as a terrorist.
“Not mentioning this fact is regrettable and such incompetence on the part of special mandate holders does this organisation (the UN) tremendous harm,” he warned.
India had Interpol issue a ‘Red Corner Notice’ for Dawood Ibrahim, requiring law enforcement around the world to look out for him and arrest him for extradition.
“For the record, this individual (Dawood Ibrahim) fled India much before the 2003 listing” as an international terrorist by the Security Council, Puri said.
“And it was during this period from outside our country that he was listed for being associated with al-Qaeda and with Osama bin Laden,” he clarified.
“To date, he remains a wanted criminal in my country, and as per the UN’s listing entry, resides in the same country where Osama bin Laden was found and neutralised,” he said.
Bin Laden was found hiding under Pakistan’s protection in Abbottabad in 2011 and killed by US Navy SEALs.
“Human rights framework cannot be the refuge of the perpetrators of terror and those who propagate radicalisation and extremism.
Terrorism can never be justified,” Puri said.
Puri said India was concerned by media allegations against this important office of rapporteur and added, “We would urge that the highest standards of probity and impartiality be maintained.”
Coincidentally, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in Mumbai, the city of the deadly 26/11 attack by Pakistani terrorists in 2008, Wednesday questioned the competence of the special rapporteurs.
“‘The UN experts’ are the oxymoron”, he said.
Turning to Pakistan, which had brought up Kashmir, Puri said, “Everyone in this room knows that what has been mentioned against my country, including about the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, is pure propaganda made for very narrow political gains.”
The allegations against India have been made by “the actual rulers of Pakistan, which is its military”, he said.
He dismissed them, saying, “I would like to reiterate for the record that Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh are an inalienable part of India and have been so and will always remain.”