A UN committee has taken dozens of Taliban and al Qaeda names off a terrorism sanctions list and said Monday that many of those remaining may be dead. The committee is investigating into how many of the terror suspects have died since they were put on the list - many after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, its chairman Thomas Mayr-Harting told the UN Security Council.
There are now 433 Taliban and al Qaeda individuals and entities on the UN sanctions list, Mayr-Harting, the Austrian ambassador to the UN, told the council. He said 45 entries had been taken off and that 58 other requests were being studied. Eight individuals - two Taliban and six al Qaeda - on the list have died, Mayr-Harting added. He gave none of the identities.
"There remain a considerable number of deceased persons on the list which is why the committee will conduct a specific review of deceased persons" in coming months, he told the council. Of the individuals and groups on the list, more than 200 are linked to al Qaeda and about 130 to the Taliban, according to the Austrian envoy. The committee was set up under UN Security Council resolution 1267 in 1999. Its official website is: http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1267/.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2010

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