Today the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) added Qari Hussain (a.k.a. Qari Hussain Mehsud) to its list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons. U.S. individuals and companies are prohibited from engaging in any transactions with any person or entity on the SDN list.

Qari Hussain, according to this report, is blamed for organizing the December 2009 suicide attack on the U.S. operating center in Khost, Afghanistan, which killed seven U.S. employees of the CIA. He also recruited Faisal Shahzad, the wannabe Times Square bomber whose bomb fizzled in May 2010 and who is now serving a life sentence without possibility of parole.

It appears, however, that Hussain died on October 4, 2010, when he was blown up by a U.S. drone operating in North Waziristan. Although Hussain has been reported previously to have died in attacks that he in fact survived, this does not appear to be the case here. After his reported death in 2009, he called reporters to prove that he was alive. No such call has been made since the October 4 attack. Additionally, a “senior counter-terrorism official” as well as a high-level leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, with which Hussain was associated and which initially denied reports of his death, confirmed to Asia Times Online that Hussain had died in the attack.

Although better late than never is not a particularly good rationale for putting someone on the SDN list, perhaps this is, to give OFAC the benefit of the doubt, a case of better safe than sorry given Hussain’s previous history of near-death experiences.

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