In UN Sanctions Follies, Jim'ale Shifted to Somalia List, Eritrea Report
Down, Bryden Spins
By Matthew Russell Lee, Partial exclusive
UNITED NATIONS, July 24, 2012 updated -- The UN's Somalia and Eritrea
sanctions are a circus. A report on Eritrea was put online, then taken down
after an Ethiopian UN official Taye Brook-Zerihoun spoke with some but not
all Security Council members.
<
http://www.innercitypress.com/ban3eritrea062812.html>
Meanwhile the coordinator of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea,
the Canadian Matt Bryden, openly leaked his Group's report and was quoted
about it by name, before it was given to Eritrea.
Somalia too has criticized Bryden, as supporting the full or formal
breakaway of Somaliland.
Tuesday in front of the Security Council members from three countries gave
Inner City Press exclusive and negative reviews of Bryden's performance.
"He's leaving," one of them said. There is snarky speculation Bryden may
have been angling for a book deal, or a post with a group like HRW.
Update: a Permanent Representative came out and told Inner City Press the
problem with Bryden is speaking on his own for a "collective product."
Others point at the report and wonder if it's really in the SEMG's mandate
to analyze the Eritrean Air Force, down to the last spark plug, see report
at Page 16 <
http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2012/545> .
One wag asked, "A no fly zone via sanctions?"
In a lower profile but more telling untold tale, an individual initially
put on the Al Qaeda sanctions list was moved from that last earlier this
year to the "list of individuals and entities subject to the travel ban,
assets freeze and targeted arms embargo imposed by paragraphs 1, 3 and 7 of
resolution 1844 (2008)."
He is Djibouti national named Ali Ahmed Nur Jim'ale, described as the
largest shareholder in the telecommunications firm Hormuud. Click here
<
http://www.innercitypress.com/som1hormuud060112.html> for Inner City Press
coverage of Hormuud <
http://www.innercitypress.com/som1hormuud060112.html> .
The UN darkly notes
<
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2012/sc10545.doc.htm> that "Hormuud is
operated by several former large shareholders of Al-Barakaat with Jim'ale
being the largest shareholder."
Barakaat was a firm that got all of its money, and the small remittances
of expatriate Somalis in cities like Minneapolis
<
http://www.innercitypress.com/minn1somalia061010.html> , frozen (stolen,
some say) after a terrorism charge.
The irony is that now the TFG's Somali Mission to the UN, or at least one
vocal member of it, tells Inner City Press that Hormuud and by implication
Jim'ale did nothing wrong.
A well placed source exclusively told Inner City Press that the fact that
Jim'ale was taken off the 1267 Al Qaeda sanctions list, but simply moved to
another sanctions list with a lower threshold and no ombudsperson like Kim
Prost, is a "travesty." But isn't Matt Bryden, and the take-down of the
Eritrea report <
http://www.innercitypress.com/ban3eritrea062812.html> ? So
it goes at the UN.
Defenders of the Jim'ale process, or of the UN Security Council, told
Inner City Press that Jim'ale was taken off the Al Qaeda list and put on the
Somalia list "without any linkage other than a member state who managed the
transition."
Another, going bigger picture, said it should be admitted that the UN
sanctions is purely political and not legal, adding his view that Jim'ale
should have been kept on the 1267 sanctions list too -- on a political
basis. Even more so, this is how it goes at the UN.
Received on Tue Jul 24 2012 - 14:51:07 EDT
