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Friday,
December 27, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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3 detained for Pak Xmas blast Violence mars Xmas festivity Pak to raise Kashmir
bogey yet again
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FBI’s modus operandi in Pak China executes
11 convicts USA ‘confirms’ rapes by Myanmar troops
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3 detained for Pak Xmas blast Daska, (Pakistan), December 26 Shahid Iqbal, a senior police officer in the area of the attack, said the suspects belonged to the Jaish-e-Mohammad. The police said the three came from the village where the attack took place. Yesterday’s explosion at a church in a remote village, 20 km from the small industrial town of Daska was the latest in a string of attacks on Christians in Pakistan’s. President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali condemned the attack in separate messages, calling it an attempt to disrupt and divide the mainly Muslim country of 140 million persons. “Such acts are committed by those anti-Pakistan elements who wish to disrupt peace and create dissension among different communities in the country,” the government’s APP news agency quoted General Musharraf as saying. Mr Iqbal said three men had been caught. “They had received armed training at a Jaish centre in Pakistan,” he told Reuters by telephone. “I cannot release their names but they are being questioned right now.” The arrested men included a Muslim preacher and his son. Yesterday’s blast, which the police initially blamed on a grenade, killed two of the girls instantly — decapitating one of them. It wounded 14 persons. About 50 persons, most of them children and women, were attending special prayers in the church at the time. One witness said flying glass from smashed windows flew into people’s eyes. “We were offering prayers and my eyes were shut when something fell inside,” Babur Pervaiz, one of the wounded, told reporters. “When I turned back to see what it was, there was a loud explosion.” Television footage showed a bloodsoaked rug and human remains scattered around the church. Another witness Nazeer said worshippers saw two men, whose faces were covered, throwing a “ball-like” object that exploded immediately. “There was smoke and a strange smell, like that of chemicals,” he said.
Reuters
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Violence mars Xmas festivity
London, December 26 Most tourists and religious pilgrims stayed away from Bethlehem yesterday, but a small number of Palestinian Christians braved the dreary weather to attend Mass in the town of Jesus’ birth. Latin patriarch Michel Sabbah, the highest-ranking Roman Catholic clergyman in the holy land, told worshippers at the Church of the Nativity not to lose hope, despite the bloodshed and hardships. The service was one of the highlights in an otherwise gloomy Christmas for Bethlehem, which lacked the traditional decorations, trees and lights in protest against Israel’s reoccupation of the West Bank town. It was the first time since 1994 that Christians there celebrated under Israeli military control. The Christmas message from the Vatican focused on a plea to avoid war. “From the cave of Bethlehem there rises today an urgent appeal to the world not to yield to mistrust, suspicion and discouragement, even though the tragic reality of terrorism feeds uncertainties and fears,” Pope John Paul II said as he stepped up the Vatican’s campaign opposing any US-led preventive attack on Iraq. But in Pakistan, two assailants shrouded in women’s robes threw at least one hand grenade at a small Christian church in the populous Punjab province, killing three worshippers, including at least one young girl, and wounding more than 10, the authorities said. The church was holding a Christmas service when the attack took place yesterday in the village of Chianwala, about 65 km northwest of Lahore. All three dead and most of the wounded were women or girls and all were Pakistani, officials said. Earlier, the Pakistani police found explosives and ammunition in a shopping bag hidden in bushes near a heavily guarded church in Islamabad. Church officials feared they had been the intended target of an attack, but went ahead with services. Security had been increased at churches around the predominantly Islamic nation, which has seen a string of attacks by extremist Muslims aimed at Christians. Security was also heightened in the Southeast Asian nation of Indonesia. Thousands of policemen were deployed in the Indonesian Capital, Jakarta, as Christians flocked to churches to celebrate Christmas despite warnings that Islamic extremists might target places of worship this holiday season. Worshippers had to pass through metal detectors and the police searched their bags before they could attend services at Jakarta Cathedral. The Indonesian police seized almost 250 kg of a fertiliser usable in explosives that they said was to be delivered to a fugitive bomber. They said the cache of ammonium nitrate seized in Palu, about 1,500 km northeast of Jakarta, was much bigger than the amount detonated in devastating blasts in Bali’s night life district on October 12. In Belgrade, Yugoslavia, about 30 hardline Serb nationalists prevented dozens of worshippers from attending an Anglican Christmas Eve church service that was to be held in a Serbian Orthodox chapel. AP
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Pak to raise Kashmir
bogey yet again PAKISTAN, which will become a member of the UN Security Council at the start of the new year for a two-year term, has given notice that it will take advantage of its new position to highlight the Kashmir issue on an international level. Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri said in an interview to the "Voice of America" last week that it was the biggest success of Islamabad's diplomacy and foreign policy that it would soon become a member of the council. The Pakistan News Service quoted him as saying that taking advantage of its membership, his country would try to highlight the Kashmir issue. Observers say it is not new for Pakistan to try to internationalise the issue. At every session of the UN General Assembly and at every other forum in the world body, Islamabad had used the slightest pretext to raise the Kashmir bogey and call for the implementation of the morbund UN resolutions on Kashmir. Mr Kasuri said several important countries were also in the run to become a member of the Security Council, but Pakistan's responsible role against terrorism and its positive attitude towards international issues was the basic reason that the world community decided to support it. “It will be our duty and responsibility to try to implement the council resolutions as they relate to Iraq or Kashmir,” he said. “It will be our effort that the world community should resolve all issues in compliance with the UN umbrella rather than use force in this regard.” Asked about the prospects for the resumption of the Indo-Pak dialogue following the postponement of the SAARC summit, he said: "We will try to normalise the situation." |
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FBI’s modus operandi in Pak
Islamabad, December 26 It should be interesting to have a look at the FBI's modus opeandi. Their officials, numbering 12, according to the Minister of Information and Media Development Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, reportedly come and go. These officials, says Pakistani link, possess satellite images and modern communication system, which can record the conversation of any suspect over satellite, mobile and ordinary telephone. The FBI and CIA officials sit in the US Ambassy and live in diplomats’ residences. Their contact is confined only to Pakistan Army’s intelligence agency officials. The FBI, the BBC adds, does have the resources to collect information but it does not have its own means to conduct raids, search places and arrest people. According to senior Punjab police officials, the FBI has not so far conducted any operation without the participation of the ISI. Therefore, when the government says that the action against Dr Ahmed Javed has been carried out by Pakistani agencies, the statement is correct but only half-true. The ISI or military intelligence ask the Lahore police chief to provide manpower and other resources to conduct a certain operation and sometimes the police do not know in advance as to where the operation is going to be conducted. These agencies reportedly did not obtain warrants from Magistrates in all the arrests made so far. The way the Lahore police, FBI and military intelligence agencies raided the house of Dr Ahmed Javed on December 19 without any warrant and arrested him along with eight relatives has intensified the questions about the FBI role. ANI
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China executes 11 convicts
Beijing, December 26 Among those put to death yesterday was Zhou Jinyan, whose sentence for murdering a teacher was greeted with applause from the 200-strong audience that had turned up for the verdicts and subsequent killings, the Chutian Metropolitan News said. Zhou, 45, appeared calm when his sentence was pronounced, although his legs were shaking violently, according to the paper’s reporter. Another among the 11, 43-year-old Hu Qirong was sentenced for clubbing and stabbing to death his neighbour’s son and mother-in-law, the paper said. Hu went on the rampage after he was fired from his company for stealing, and believed his neighbour had tipped off the employer, according to the paper. Other cases ending on the execution ground yesterday included two separate murders that both resulted from trivial arguments at local restaurants, the paper said. The number of executions in China is kept secret, but even rough tallies by the Amnesty International based on highly selective reporting of cases in Chinese media indicate the figure is vast. The London-based human rights group recorded 1,939 death sentences and 1,356 confirmed executions in China during 2000. Many death sentences and executions are for non-violent crimes, such as drug trafficking. AFP
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USA ‘confirms’ rapes by Myanmar troops Washington, December 26 Following reports by human rights groups in Thailand in June of 625 rapes by Myanmar army troops in Shan State, the US State Department sent an investigator to the Thailand-Myanmar border in August, the newspaper said. According to the investigator, who talked to refugees in Thailand, “We were able to locate many victims and record chilling new stories of rape and other atrocities in just three days.” “All of the victims had been gang-raped by Burmese soldiers within the past five years, including a 13-year-old girl,” The Post reported. Reuters
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Daska,
(Pakistan), December 26
In
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