UN freezes assets in anti-terror drive

The United Nations Security Council has ordered a global freeze on the assets of a Pakistani organisation, two former nuclear scientists and a Pakistani industrialist suspected of links to Osama bin Laden.

The council’s committee monitoring sanctions against Afghanistan added the Ummah Tameer-e-Nau group and the three Pakistanis - Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood, Abdul Majid, and Mohammed Tufail - to its fast-growing list of individuals and organisations linked to bin Laden.

The council move makes it mandatory for all 189 UN member nations to freeze any assets belonging to the group and the three individuals.

On December 20, the US administration declared Ummah Tameer-e-Nau a terrorist group and ordered the group’s assets frozen along with those of the three Pakistani men.

Ummah Tameer-e-Nau was founded by a retired nuclear scientist to run development projects in Afghanistan and is suspected of having links to bin Laden and Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

Mahmood and Majid are Pakistani nuclear scientists who had been detained on suspicion of sharing technical information bin Laden.

They worked for Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission until retiring in 1999. They then managed a charity organization, Tameer-e-Ummah, or ‘‘Nation Builder’’, and made several trips to Afghanistan, where they met bin Laden, but say they were simply doing charity work.

Both denied transferring any nuclear-related information to Afghanistan and said they only ran education programmes and helped poor Afghan farmers. Mahmood claimed he talked with bin Laden about plans for the rehabilitation of Afghanistan.

Tufail was described as a Pakistani industrialist.

The US administration has accused bin Laden and his al-Qaida network of masterminding the September 11 attacks that demolished the World Trade Centre and damaged the Pentagon.

US president George Bush has said that the financial lifeline of terrorist groups must be cut off as part of the war against terrorism.

Last December, the Security Council ordered that all states ‘‘should immediately freeze the funds and other financial assets of bin Laden and any entities and individuals associated with him’’.

Earlier lists of groups and individuals tied to bin Laden were drawn up in March and August by the sanctions panel, and a consolidated list was issued in October.