Reports that more names will be added to the United Nations Security Council list of terror suspects come from the media, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said on Monday.
Pahad said he read in media reports that there had been a meeting with a ”United States senior official who did not want to be named” who said more names would be added on the UN’s list of terror suspects.
Pahad was speaking at a media briefing in Pretoria.
”It’s very difficult for us to work out who these people are. They are just unknown. If they have a view to put, why don’t they put it? Why are they remaining deep-throats?” Pahad asked.
It was from the newspaper reports that the Foreign Affairs Ministry came to the conclusion that more names were going to be on the terror list, Pahad said.
Whoever wants to add more South African names to the terror list could share the names with the Department of Foreign Affairs in order to see how they could move forward, he said.
The US two weeks ago listed Junaid Dockrat, a Johannesburg dentist, and his cousin, Pretoria cleric Farhad Ahmed Dockrat, as suspected terrorists with links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
The South African government asked the UN to hold back on putting them on its list of terror suspects.
Last week, the South African Press Association reported that an unnamed US official believed South Africa would agree to the listing after studying US evidence and intelligence on them.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said it was ”unlikely” the two men would be the only South Africans listed, expressing the belief that more names could follow.
”If we get sufficient evidence and intelligence, we’ll do what’s necessary,” the official said. — Sapa