Washington, October 7, 2026 (Yes Punjab News)
The United States has formally published the removal of three Pakistan-linked men from its sanctions list, following their delisting by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in July.
The three individuals are Mohammed Tufail, Sher Afghan and Nasir Ali Khan. All three had been designated more than two decades ago in cases involving terrorism or narcotics trafficking.
The removals were made by OFAC on July 27 as part of a broader effort to modernise US sanctions lists and were formally published in the Federal Register on Wednesday.
The Treasury Department said the July action removed 84 individuals and entities and updated other entries to keep sanctions targeted, effective and current. The review included individuals and organisations that were no longer considered US national-security or foreign-policy priorities, including some deceased individuals, defunct entities and targets designated more than 20 years ago.
The department did not publicly specify which rationale applied to each of the three Pakistan-linked individuals.
Tufail, also known as S M Tufail and Sheik Mohammed Tufail, had been designated under US terrorism-related sanctions. When his assets were blocked in December 2001, the Treasury identified him as an industrialist and one of three key directors of Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN), an organisation founded by Pakistani nuclear scientists.
At the time, the Treasury said UTN directors and members had met Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda leaders and Taliban leader Mullah Omar and discussed the development of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
Sher Afghan and Nasir Ali Khan were designated under US narcotics sanctions. Sher Afghan, also known by aliases including Shir Afghan, Mohammad Aziz and Abdullah Khan, was born in Pakistan and was added to the sanctions list in June 2001 under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.
Nasir Ali Khan, who was born in Pakistan in 1955, was also placed under narcotics sanctions in June 2001. A US State Department report on Pakistan’s counter-narcotics efforts in 1996 said the country’s caretaker government had arrested a major trafficker named Nasir Ali Khan, who was wanted in the United States on drug charges. It said an American extradition request was pending.
Available records do not specify why each of the three men was removed from the sanctions list in July.
OFAC said the broader sanctions-modernisation exercise was intended to eliminate outdated entries and improve the accuracy of its lists while ensuring that removals did not undermine US national-security or foreign-policy interests.
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