India hit out at the UN rapporteurs for bias in a counter-terror report.
New Delhi: India slammed a UN special rapporteur’s report which described Pakistan-based gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s D-company as an India-based criminal group. Pointing to “glaring inaccuracies” in the report, India warned that such incompetence caused tremendous harm to the global body.First secretary in India’s permanent mission to UN, Raghoo Puri, said the outfit and its chief were wanted in India in connection with the 1993 Mumbai blasts. “Let me correct it for the record. This individual fled India much before the 2003 listing, and it was during this period... that he was listed for being associated with Al Qaida and with Osama bin Laden,” Puri said.
Dawood still wanted, lives where Osama died: India at UN
First secretary in India’s permanent mission to UN, Raghoo Puri, was responding to a report by Ben Saul, the special rapporteur on the ‘Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism’.“My delegation has been pointing out in other forums as well our serious concern at the unacceptable situation of the SR (special rapporteur) releasing reports with factual inaccuracies, while not being held accountable for them,” Puri said.He said this presented member-states with a fait accompli, an unfortunate situation for an organisation already facing challenges to its legitimacy. “It is in this context that we would like to point out some particularly glaring inaccuracies as far as my country is concerned,” Puri said.
Puri underlined that the report by Ben Saul said in 2003, the United Nations Security Council listed the chief of a criminal group, “the India-based D-Company”, for association with Al Qaida.“Read in isolation, this line paints a very different picture from the actual reality,” Puri said. “This is clearly written in the narrative summary of reasons of listing under the 1267 sanctions regime,” he added, referring to UN Security Council’s Al Qaida sanctions regime.
“Not mentioning this fact is regrettable, and such incompetence on part of special mandate holders does this organisation tremendous harm,” Raghoo Puri added.Puri said Dawood remained a wanted criminal in India and according to the UN listing, he resided in the same country where Osama Bin Laden was found and killed, making a clear reference to Pakistan. Bin Laden was killed by US Navy Seals in a raid in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad in 2011.