The United States is expected to place two South Africans on its list of terrorism suspects on Friday — a massive list of 325 000 names which has been criticised by rights groups as possibly including innocents.
On Thursday, diplomatic sources told the South African Press Association that Junaid Ismail Dockrat, a dentist from Mayfair, Johannesburg, and his cousin, Pretoria cleric Farhad Ahmed Dockrat, have been named by the US government as terror suspects with links to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and the deposed Taliban in Afghanistan.
The Dockrats have denied links to any terror group.
The US is expected to go ahead with its own listing even if the United Nations Security Council does not put the Dockrats on the UN list as the US has requested.
The list is run by the US National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC).
It compels all US financial institutions to freeze any assets and assistance, which they might give or hold on behalf of the Dockrats.
Last year, the Washington Post reported that there were 325 000 names on the NCTC list, most not US citizens and not resident in the US, and that human rights watchers warned it could include innocents.
People may appear under different spellings or aliases, so the true number of people listed is estimated to be more than 200 000.
Timothy Sparapani, legislative counsel for privacy rights at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Post the numbers were ”shocking but, unfortunately, not surprising”.
”We have lists that are having baby lists at this point; they’re spawning faster than rabbits,” Sparapani said.
”If we have over 300 000 known terrorists who want to do this country harm, we’ve got a much bigger problem than deciding which names go on which list. But I highly doubt that is the case.”
Other rights watchers told the Post it was not clear how someone wrongly put on the list could get off it.
”One of the seemingly unsolvable problems is what do you do when someone is wrongly put on this watch list,” said executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre, Marc Rotenberg.
”If there are that many people on the list, a lot of them probably shouldn’t be there. But how are they ever going to get off?”
On Friday, Nepal’s former communist rebels criticised the US for keeping them on its terrorist list and for warning that it would cut aid to areas of an interim government in which the ex-guerrillas will be involved, reported the Associated Press (AP).
”The US welcomed the interim constitution and Parliament brought through the peace process, but at the same time they [the Americans] are saying they will not support the ministries to be led by us,” said Chandra Prakash Gajurel, chief of Maoist rebels’ foreign department.
”This just shows that how shortsighted and faulty the US policies are.”
US Ambassador James Moriarty had warned of the aid cuts, saying the Maoists had given orders that were ”very much against democracy”.
”There are many parties and groups in the world that are legitimate parties [who] refuse to bow down to US policies, and they are all in their terrorist list,” Gajurel told AP. – Sapa