The men deemed the most dangerous in the world – blacklisted by unanimous consent of the world’s biggest powers – now have an advocate of sorts, a diminutive Canadian jurist with a disarming laugh who vows to shine some light on what has been a very dark process.
If Osama bin Laden believes he has been unjustly targeted by the United Nations 1267 al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee, then he should contact Kimberly Prost, the first-ever UN Security Council ombudsperson. She is charged with bringing some fairness, transparency and justice to the terrorism blacklist that has had none, until now.
The 52-year-old Canadian with a track record that includes time as a war-crimes judge and plenty of exposure to the tough, often-murky worlds of international drugs and terrorism trials, is under no illusions. She knows that if the world powers routinely reject her opinions about who is wrongly on the 1267 list, she will be regarded as a fig leaf for an already much-maligned effort that bans anyone deemed to be connected to Mr. bin Laden, al-Qaeda or the Taliban from travelling or working and requires that their assets be seized.
Judge Prost brims with cautious optimism.
“This is the first opportunity for an individual to have an independent third party to look at their cases,” she said in long, wide-ranging interview. “I want to bring as much due process as I can.”
It’s a huge conundrum. From mountain caves and remote compounds, from Saudi prisons to low-rent apartments in Montreal and Hamburg and Jakarta, those who feel they have been smeared are supposed to contact – and then trust – Judge Prost in her mid-town Manhattan office block and seek her help in persuading the world powers that a mistake has been made. “Of course it is not perfect … but it is an enormous step forward,” she said.
Judge Prost will report twice a year, the first time next month.
“I tell them [the Security Council] what I think,” she said with a forthrightness that suggests there will be little room for misunderstanding. The council can then ignore or over-ride her “observations.”
Whether the creation of an ombudsperson passes the test of international credibility and delivers fairness will take months, perhaps years, to determine. Much will depend on how willing Judge Prost is to make public those instances in which the Security Council refuses to delist someone she believes deserves to be removed.
While the al-Qaeda leader seems unlikely to call, there are hundreds of less infamous people on the 1267 list who will seek Judge Prost’s intervention.
Abousfian Abdelrazik is among them. He’s the Canadian kept in forced exile for six years by successive governments in Ottawa, both Liberal and Conservative. They used the 1267 listing as an excuse to deny him a passport and refused to allow him to return to his home in Canada.
Mr. Abdelrazik is now back in Montreal after a Canadian federal judge ordered his repatriation and blasted government ministers for riding roughshod over his constitutional rights. Never charged with any crime, Mr. Abdelrazik remains in a twilight zone imposed by Ottawa and the UN blacklist. He can’t work, he can’t travel and his assets, including his dead wife’s estate, have been seized by Ottawa. This is all because some unnamed country added him to the 1267 list and despite being cleared by Canadian security agencies.
