While the Exit Control List (ECL) in Pakistan prohibits terrorists, tax defaulters, drug traffickers, conspirators and other corrupt elements from boarding planes and proceeding abroad, similar No-Fly Lists also exist in countries like India, United States, United Kingdom and Canada etc, an exclusive research conducted by the “Jang Group and Geo Television Network” shows.
Therefore, model Ayyan Ali, alleged of laundering money, should understand that the Exit Control Lists or the No-Fly Lists are easy to challenge, despite the fact that the court has allowed her to fly abroad.
The research below shows how top international actors and even the all-powerful US senators had to bear the agony of getting past these No-Fly Lists.
Here follow some brief details about the No-Fly Lists in Pakistan, India, US, UK and Canada:
Pakistan: In December 2015, reports of local domestic newspapers had revealed that Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan-led Interior Ministry had deleted another 9,753 names from the Exit Control List.
The action was initiated after the Pakistani Federal Interior Minister had announced that the ECL would be rationalised since it contained several names that had been placed there on the basis of personal grudges and with malafide intent.
The process for rationalisation of the list was initiated in May 2015, when the Interior Ministry had issued 7,500 notices to the departments that had placed the names of different people on it.
In September 2015, the Pakistani Interior Minister had announced that 4,987 names had been removed from the ECL.
Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had asserted that only those names that had been on the ECL for less than three years had been retained.
Those retained in the ECL included people involved in anti-state activities or terrorism, had links with proscribed organisations, had names on the fourth schedule of the Anti-Terrorism Act or those who had been placed on the list on the orders of the superior judiciary had not been removed.
No government department was allowed to place restrictions on freedom and movement of any person without any justification for an indefinite period.
At the same time 19,836 names had been deleted from the Black List, which restricted the use of a passport by the person whose name was on the list.
The Interior Ministry had started rationalising the Black List in September 2015 and the names of 59,603 persons were removed from it.
Around 22,491 names were deleted, 9,660 were moved to the Passport Control List (PCL) and 27,452 were hence placed on the Visa Control List (VCL).
Research further shows that more than six years ago in December 2009, following a Supreme Court order, the Interior Ministry had placed the names of 253 people – including the then incumbent Interior Minister Rehman Malik and other NRO beneficiaries affected by the SC verdict – on the Exit Control List.
It was the National Accountability Bureau that was actually ensuring that the Apex Court’s directives in this context were implemented.
Other names placed on the ECL in 2009 had included the then Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar, MQM’s Farooq Sattar and Babar Ghauri, Jahangir Badar, Nusrat Bhutto, Wajid Shamsul Hassan, Salman Farooqi, Usman Farooqi, Hussain Haqqani, Pir Mazharul Haq, Agha Siraj Durrani, late Imran Farooq, Wasim Akhtar, Zulfikar Mirza, Brigadier Imtiaz, Ambassador Maula Buksh Abbasi, Anwar Saifullah, ex-MNA Rana Nazeer, Nawab Yousaf Talpur, Aslam Hayat, Shoaib Bukhari, Saeed Mehdi, Ahmed Sadiq, former MNA Mushtaq Awan, Munawwar Talpur, Sallem Shahzad, Seth Nisar Ahmed, Dr. Safdar Baqri, Ahmed Riaz Sheikh, Captain (R) Naseer Ahmed, Javed Talat, Kanwar Khalid Younas, Mir Baz Khan Khaitran and Aftab Sherpao etc.
However, the then President Asif Ali Zardari and Sindh Governor Ishratul Ebad enjoyed constitutional immunity and were not barred from flying abroad.
India: In February 2015, the “Indian Express” had reported that famous Greenpeace activist Priya Pillai's name was all set to be removed from the country’s No-Fly list.
The “Indian Express had reported: “Pillai was the subject of a massive outcry when she was ‘offloaded’ at the Indira Gandhi International airport in New Delhi from a London-bound flight on January 11, 2015 under an order from the Intelligence Bureau. Pillai had been travelling to London to address the All Party Parliamentary Group on Indo-British relations about the plans of London-registered Company Essar Energy who want to build a coal mine in the Mahan forest in India.”
The premier Indian newspaper had added: “Earlier in June 3, 2014, the Intelligence Bureau came up with a report on foreign-funded NGOs negatively impacting economic development in India, wherein it had stated Greenpeace as “a threat to national economic security” due to its protests against nuclear and coal plants and funding of ‘sympathetic research’ to support its cause. The report had accused Greenpeace of contravening laws to “change the dynamics of India’s energy mix.”
Air India on Sunday night stopped 19 Indian students from boarding its flight to San Fransisco after being informed from US authorities that the universities to which they had secured admission were under "scrutiny". Air India on Sunday night stopped 19 Indian students from boarding its flight to San Fransisco after being informed from US authorities that the universities to which they had secured admission were under "scrutiny".
United States: The American No Fly List was created and maintained by the US government’s Terrorist Screening Centre. Research shows that before 9/11, there were only 16 individuals that the government deemed an aviation threat.
In December 2001, the US No-Fly List was formally created with 594 names on it. In 2006, the US No-Fly List was 540 pages long and contained 44,000 names.
There were 10,000 names on the list in 2011, 21,000 in 2012, and 47,000 in 2014.
The Obama administration has also boosted the number of people on the no-fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000 — surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George Bush. The government also adds names to its databases, or adds information on existing subjects, at a rate of 900 records each day. Interestingly, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab or the “underwear bomber,” who was accused of trying to bomb the Northwest Airlines Flight 253, and Faisal Shahzad, who was convicted of planting a car bomb in Times Square in 2010, were both on the No-Fly List and allowed to board planes.
The American No Fly List is different from the Terrorist Watch List, a much longer list of people said to be suspected of some involvement with terrorism.
In its December 8, 2015 edition, the “Wall Street Journal” had reported: “The federal government maintains several databases of people suspected of links to terrorism, including a no-fly list barring certain individuals from boarding airplanes in the United States. Those databases, especially the No-Fly List, long have been challenged by civil libertarians regarding the lack of transparency about how and why people are included. Most individuals in the databases have never been charged with a crime and are only suspected of being involved with terrorism. The No-Fly List itself is the smallest of all the government terrorism watch lists with about 16,000 names at last count, though it has attracted the most public criticism and legal challenges. A federal court this year declared the government’s system for dealing with appeals and challenges to inclusion on the No-Fly List are unconstitutional.”
The American Civil Liberties Union has long criticised the No Fly List because of the lack of notification to persons included on it.
The aforementioned US human rights organisation has often viewed: “Individuals usually do not know they have been put on the list until they attempt to board a plane. Efforts to discover the reasons for being barred from flying meet with indeterminate responses from the authorities, which would neither confirm nor deny that a name is on the List.”
We can all recall that in August 2009, Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan was held for extensive questioning by US Immigration and Customs officials, because as he reported, "his name came up on a computer alert list."
The US Customs officials had claimed Shah Rukh "was questioned as part of a routine process that took 66 minutes." The ace Indian actor was visiting the United States to promote his film “My name is Khan,” which was about racial profiling of Muslims in the United States.
Similarly, a Malaysian academician, Rahinah Ibrahim, who was a doctoral candidate at Stanford University, was waiting to board a flight from San Francisco to Hawaii en route to Malaysia nearly a decade ago when she was told she was on the No-Fly List.
The 48-year-old woman was eventually cleared to fly to Malaysia but her US visa was revoked, barring her from returning to Stanford.
With no explanation as to why she was on the list that prohibited anyone with certain names from US air travel, she decided to sue the American government to find out the causes of her misfortune.
In 2008, a San Francisco court issued a ruling in favour of Rahinah Ibrahim, but not before the mysterious No-Fly List had left her grounded for life.
The US government revealed that the Malaysian woman had ended up on the list because of human error by the FBI.
Even some high-profile American politicians have had to bear the agony due to these No-Fly Lists.
A December 7, 2005 report of the “CNN” had said: “Senator Ted Kennedy told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2004 that he had been stopped and interrogated on at least five occasions as he attempted to board flights at several different airports. A Bush administration official explained to the Washington Post that Kennedy had been held up because the name "T. Kennedy" had become a popular pseudonym among terror suspects.”
The United Kingdom: After it was reported in early 2010 that some 20 odd radicalised university students might be preparing attacks on Britain and the US, the British authorities had announced the tightening of security measures.
The January 20, 2010 edition of “The Telegraph” had stated: “Premier Gordon Brown announced a new two-stage system. It will increase the number of people on a 'No-Fly List' who are stopped before boarding planes to Britain, and will subject a second tier of travellers to additional checks. Explaining the new security measures, Brown said the government planned to split the watch list in two, creating a 'No-Fly List' for those of most concern and a second larger list of those who should be subject to special measures including “enhanced screening prior to boarding flights bound for the UK.”
However, Britain’s No-Fly List has also generated a few controversies of late.
For example, in January this year, a six-year-old Muslim boy was banned from flying to the United States after he was flagged as a threat to national security.
Canada: A few years ago, the government of Canada had created its own No-Fly List as part of a project called the “Passenger Protect Programme.” The Canadian list had incorporated data from domestic and foreign intelligence sources, including the American No-Fly List, though it only contained between 500 and 2,000 names in 2007.