TIL Desk/World/Washington/ Pakistan turned down the visa request of a UN team which wanted to interview Mumbai attack mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed on his application for removing his name from the UNSC sanctions list, according to UN sources.
Saeed was listed under UN Security Council Resolution 1267 in December 2008 after the Mumbai terror attack in which 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists killed 166 people. He was released from house arrest in Pakistan in November 2017.
A representative from the Permanent Mission of Pakistan to the UN informed the UN Ombudsperson in October last year that no visa would be issued for their travel to Pakistan, UN sources said. The UN Ombudsperson reviews requests from UN designated individuals and entities to be removed from the UN Sanctions Committee listing.
Sources said the Pakistani representative had
sought that the visit be postponed till the beginning of 2019 but the
Ombudsperson had made it clear that such an extension for the travel could not
be given due relevant UNSC provisions. The UN has rejected an appeal of Saeed,
the 2008 Mumbai terror attack mastermind, to remove his name from its list of
banned terrorists, they said.
