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April 15, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Nepal expels Pak diplomat |
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Pak navy ex-chief faces graft charge Pak national jailed for smuggling bid JUI leader held in Pakistan
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Benazir has assets of £ 1.2b, says Guardian London, April 14 Although the former Prime Minister won a significant victory last week when the Pakistani Supreme Court overturned a conviction for corruption against her and her husband and ordered a retrial, Bow Street magistrates court here on Thursday released detailed financial documents about the couple and statements taken from nine associates. The Pakistani National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has been trying to secure the documents since the army seized power 18 months ago. It has not yet had sight of them, the paper adds. “We believe these documents will show us the properties that they have acquired in other countries, the bank accounts they have got, and how the money they took from this country was either looted or acquired through illegal activity,” the prosecutor general for corruption, Raja Bashir, said. “We are absolutely sure that illegal money has been taken out of this country. We are looking at a figure of around $1.2bn [£ 830m]. Bashir told The Guardian that, “Ms Bhutto has 26 bank accounts, 14 properties and total assets of one billion sterling pound abroad. We are very glad that other countries are cooperating with us.” The bureau is bringing four more corruption cases against Benazir, including claims that she took kickbacks for awarding government contracts and illegally appointed 1,393 people in the state airline, PIA. Benazir denies all the charges and says they are a politically motivated attempt to prevent her returning to power. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, has been charged with six offences, including abusing his authority by building a polo ground at the Prime Minister’s official residence for his personal use, and has been in jail for four years awaiting trial. He is also allegedly implicated in the murder of his wife’s brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto — which he denies — and accused of drug-trafficking, a charge that carries the death penalty. Zardari’s lawyers challenged the Bow Street court’s decision to send the papers to Islamabad, saying it was being done only because of the drug trafficking charge, which they said was concocted to encourage London to cooperate in other corruption investigations. “Mr Zardari has been unscrupulously drawn into corruption and narcotic charges which are a travesty of truth and justice,” Pakistan People’s Party said. The British paper also reported the arrest of Mansur-ul-Haq by the US authorities, acting on a request from the NAB, in connection with alleged bribes connected to a government purchase of three Agosta 90B submarines from France under a technology transfer agreement. On Friday, the Pakistan People’s Party chairperson said in a press release here that the Bow Street Magistrate had not conducted any investigation against Zardari and that it was basically an administrative action with no legal implications. The magistrate’s assignment was limited under the law to mere recording of statements to be handed over to the Home Department as the procedure disallows legal action against him on British soil. Zardari’s legal advisers challenged the Home Secretary’s decision to send recorded statements due to apprehensions about judicial abuse in Pakistan where courts have been ransacked and judges sent home. Benazir’s press statement was in response to an Islamabad report about the London magistrate releasing documents concerning the Bhutto-Zardari bank accounts to the Pakistan authorities. “I would also like to put emphasis on that the Pakistani authorities had only asked for the recording of statements by certain individuals, who are resident in the UK. The Home Office asked Bow Street Magistrate to record the statements. This was basically an administrative action with no legal implications; the court did not allow any cross-examination of those whose statements were recorded by it,” the press satement added. “The documents were of doubtful value because in a court case, the statements had to be made in a trial court and subjected to cross-examination. At first the request was reportedly on corruption charges but subsequently Pakistani authorities sent a fresh request, listing a trumped-up narcotics charge. “The drug case was fabricated because international treaties require cooperation under it. The narcotics charge was so unconvincing that the Bow Street magistrate observed that in British courts such evidence is not allowed. Even the then Pakistani Interior Minister Shujaat Husain had admitted the fabrication of the drug case against Zardari by the then accountability chief Saifur Rahman. The Shariff and Musharraf regimes abused international law by fabricating wrong information.”
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Blast at Dhaka concert, 9 dead Dhaka, April 14 A second blast about 45 minutes later wounded a policeman. However, DPA puts the number of deceased at 11 and those wounded at 20. The concert by the country’s leading cultural group, Chhayanot, at Dhaka’s Ramna Park, was part of celebrations marking the Bengali new year and had attracted a crowd of about 15,000 persons, witnesses said. No organisation or group has claimed responsibility. The police confirmed eight deaths. “We are investigating but apparently the bombs were planted under the ground and detonated by remote control,’’ a police officer said. Doctors at Dhaka Medical College Hospital said they received seven dead and 15 critically wounded people. Other casualties had gone to the city’s other hospitals. “The bodies were badly mutilated with many organs blown away,’’ one DMCH doctor said. “Some were even beyond recognition.’’ Witnesses said the police cordoned off the blood-stained area near the concert dais where one unexploded bomb was still lying. Private television network ETV, which was broadcasting the concert live, showed the dead and wounded were lying on the ground in a pool of blood while others were screaming and running away. Meanwhile, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed today ordered the police to find those responsible for a suspected “suicide” bomb attack at a Bengali new year concert which killed eight persons. Sheikh Hasina, speaking to reporters immediately after the incident, expressed her “indignation and deep shock” and ordered the police to take all possible measures to trace those behind the attack. No one has so far claimed responsibility for this morning’s explosion in Dhaka’s crowded Ramna Park which killed eight persons instantly and injured more than 10 persons. “The people behind the incident wanted to stop Bangladesh’s march towards progress and development,” she said. The police suspect the attack was carried out by a “suicide squad” and that some of the victims were the bomb carriers themselves, the private UNB news agency reported. They also believe that the bomb could have been prematurely detonated as a result of high temperatures. Reuters,
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Nepal expels Pak diplomat Kathmandu, April 14 First Secretary Consular at the Pakistani Embassy here Mohammad
Arshad Cheema was ordered to leave the country within 24 hours for indulging in “activities incompatible with his diplomatic duties and inconsistent with the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations,’’ the Nepal Foreign Ministry has announced. The ministry also revealed that the current investigations into the RDX haul shall continue and “the Government of Pakistan has assured that following the report of the investigations, action will be taken against (Mr Cheema), if found guilty”. Meanwhile the Pakistani Embassy in Kathmandu accused the Nepali authorities of violating international conventions on conducting diplomatic relations between states. The Pakistan mission also claimed that the Cheema couple had been “framed on false and fabricated charges”. “The fact that no access was provided to the diplomats of this Embassy who had arrived at the place of incident raises suspicions about the intensions of the police that carried out the operation,’’ a Pakistani Embassy press release stated here today. The release further claimed that the diplomat and his wife were confined to the first floor of the building whereas the contraband material was allegedly recovered from the ground floor. “It has been repeatedly urged to the Nepalese authorities that such an action constitutes a clear violation of the Vienna convention. The adherence to its provisions is in the interest of the conduct of diplomatic relations between states,’’ the release added. Cheema is the second Pakistan diplomat to be expelled from Nepal within the past 15 months. In January 2000 another Pakistan Embassy official Aslam Saboor,
ostensibly a junior staff member, was expelled from Nepal after being trapped in police sting operation directed against the circulation of fake Indian currency.
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Pak navy ex-chief faces graft charge Washington, April 14 He will be produced on Monday for an initial “detention hearing” before Magistrate Judge Stephen H. Capelle, who will decide whether or not to release him on bail. Meanwhile, Pakistan would seek his extradition within 60 days of his arrest. According to the complaint filed by the Pakistan Embassy to the US State Department on March 30, Pakistan authorities had reason to believe that “Mansoor committed acts of corruption and corrupt practices” while serving as the Chief of Naval Staff from 1994 to 1997 and thereafter. The complaint was presented to the US District Court, Texas, Austin, on April 5. The complaint says that one of the accused, Jamil Ansari, admitted to Pakistani investigators that he received such illegal payments in connection with the purchase of minesweeper vessels from SOFMA, a French company.
ANI |
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Pak national jailed for smuggling bid Boston, April 14 Tahir Satti, a partner in the Sun and Star import-export company of Islamabad, was also ordered yesterday to serve a two-year term of supervised release following his imprisonment, unless he is deported. According to government prosecutors, US customs officials were informed of Sun and Star inquiries via the Internet to US sources regarding attempts to obtain sophisticated night vision equipment, produced mainly for use in night-time warfare. When Satti later advised his US contact that the equipment was intended for use by Pakistan military, he was warned that exports to Pakistan were banned. Satti persisted and was subsequently introduced to an undercover US customs agent posing as the vice-president of an export company. Satti was arrested late last year when he arrived in the USA to sign export papers for the shipment of the military goods to Pakistan through third-party companies in various foreign countries without the required export licenses.
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JUI leader held in Pakistan Islamabad, April 14 Haji Ghulam Ali was arrested by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) under draconian anti-corruption rules which allow for detention without charge for up to 90 days, the News Daily reported. Ali was a prominent member of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), a fundamentalist Islamic party, which earlier this week organised a mass rally of Islamists in the semi-tribal North West Frontier Province (NWFP), it said. “After the impressive Deoband Conference, the government has realised that the JUI has a huge following in the NWFP and has, therefore, started targeting us here (in NWFP),” JUI chief Maulana Fazlur Rahman was quoted as saying. More than 200,000 Islamists and religious scholars from around Pakistan and abroad gathered at the three-day rally near the NWFP capital, Peshawar earlier this week.
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