'Fight against terrorism in conformity with rule of law'

The fight against terrorism must be conducted in conformity with the rule of law and the principles of due process, a top UN official said today.

Addressing a press conference at UN headquarters here, Security Council's al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee Chairman Ambassador Thomas Mayr-Harting said there are "major shortcomings" in the accuracy of the List of individuals and entities subject to sanctions.

Prominent among these include freezing of assets, travel bans and arms embargoes. The Committee has to ensure that the List was a dynamic instrument, reflecting new developments, he argued during the press conference which was also addressed by Richard Barrett, Coordinator of the Committee's Sanctions Monitoring Team.

Mayr-Harting said there are insufficient information — including an absence of full names or dates of birth — about one third of the 513 names on the current list of 402 individuals and 111 entities.

This prevents the International Criminal Police Organisation (INTERPOL) from providing "special notices", without which law enforcement entities and border guards could not implement the resolution.

There are only two ways out of that dilemma: either improve the information, or drop the names from the List as nothing could be done about them, Mayr-Harting argued.

Further given that 38 of the listed individuals are presumed dead, Committee members must either confirm their deaths or arrive at a consensus that would allow their de-listing, the Austrian Ambassador said.

He said the Committee is now reviewing relevant information on each name listed before the Council's adoption of the resolution, asking the relevant States for additional information. That process could be finished by 30 June 2010, leading to a "cleansing" of the Consolidated List, he noted.

Another improvement to resolution 1822 (2008) required the posting, on the Committee's website, of "narrative summaries" explaining the reasons for each listing. Reviewing the information would clearly improve transparency and fairness, and the tabling of a follow-up text to resolution 1822 (2008) was expected by the end of 2009, he observed.