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Bomb hunt: UK police arrests four
At the wrong place, at the wrong time
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3 Taliban fighters killed
29 Pak women recommended for Nobel prize
Kasuri wants US Congress not to discriminate
Bush looks forward to visiting India
G-4 using unethical means: Italy
Dead baby removed from abdomen after 27 years
Lanka’s PM
nominated as next Presidential candidate
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Bomb hunt: UK police arrests four
London, July 27 London’s
Metropolitan police would not comment on whether a bomber had been captured, but said one of the four men arrested in the city of Birmingham was en route to the capital for questioning at a high security detention centre. Police sources said the man, detained in the Hay Mills area of Britain’s second-biggest city, was the most significant arrest. The BBC and Sky television said he was a suspected bomber. The botched bombings on July 21 occurred exactly two weeks after four suicide bombers killed 52 persons in a similar attack on London’s transport system. The police has linked the suicide bombers to Al-Qaida. The police used a
teaser stun gun on the most significant suspect and a suspect package was discovered at the address, a police spokeswoman said. “The man was
tapered during the operation although no firearms were discharged,” she said. A small area around the house was evacuated and a controlled explosion on the suspect package was to be carried out. The three other men were detained at another address and taken to a West Midlands police station. All arrests were made under anti-terrorism laws. Forensic investigations were being carried out at both addresses. The police also arrested two men at a train station in the central town of Grantham as they travelled from the northern city of Newcastle towards London’s King’s Cross. The men were arrested late yesterday after a tip-off from off-duty police officers. The London police declined to comment on whether the arrests were connected with the arrests of four men in Birmingham. The police have published the photographs of the four main suspects in the July 21 attempted attacks from images captured on security cameras. Police chief Ian Blair said yesterday the investigation into the failed attempt to bomb London’s transport network was moving at an “astonishing” pace but warned that the fugitive bombers could strike again. “They are capable of killing again,” Blair told Channel 4 News television yesterday. “We must find them. We are flat out and we are getting a great deal of intelligence.” Newspapers reported today that a prime suspect wanted for last week’s attempted London bombings had served a jail sentence for knifepoint robberies and grew to hate the British system after his conviction. Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27, wanted over an attempt to plant a bomb on a bus in last week’s failed attacks, was jailed for 5 years in 1996 for mugging people when he was part of a teenage gang, the Daily Telegraph said. The Sun tabloid said Ibrahim arrived in Britain from the East African country of Eritrea in 1992. Newspapers said Ibrahim and another of the four suspected bombers came to Britain as child refugees from East Africa and had received state welfare payments. The Home Office (interior ministry) and the police declined to comment on the reports. Yesterday, the police said they had found possible material for making explosives at a flat in north London linked to one of four suspects. The police were checking comments by a neighbour that at least one of the suspects might have returned to the flat in north London the day after the attempted bombings. “I spotted them on Friday afternoon,” Tanya Wright told the Sun. “When they spotted me, they turned pale as if they had seen a ghost. I was with my Alsatian (dog). I guess they must have thought I was a policewoman.” A police source, who declined to be identified, said the information could be “extremely interesting” but that officers had not yet confirmed the
report. |
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At the wrong place, at the wrong time
Jean Charles de Menezes wanted to be an electrician from the age of 10. The blond-haired boy would tell his mother, Maria, that it was the way he would leave behind the poverty of rural Brazil for a better life abroad.
He left the isolated farm that he grew up in at the age of 14 to pursue his studies, living with an uncle in an impoverished area of the sprawling city of Sao Paulo. By the time he was 18, Jean Charles had overcome the odds to complete his professional diploma. It was the piece of paper that would allow him swap a life of odd jobs in the crime-ridden ghettos of Sao Paulo for a home in London. After travelling to Britain on holiday, during which he may have worked illegally, he obtained a five-year residency permit. Such was his desire to make the most of the opportunity, the Brazilian had mastered English within four months of his arrival in Tulse Hill, south London, in March 2002. He quickly adapted to British life. To relax, the 27-year-old would watch television - a favourite programme was EastEnders - or hang out with friends in a Brazilian bar close to Oxford Street. He told relatives his dream was to build a successful career and earn enough money to return to the family home near the city of Gonzaga, in Minas Gerais, south-east Brazil, and set up a company. In his thrice-weekly phone calls home, he told his mother he was safe and a happy in London - that the police did not even carry guns. Gesio Cesar D'Avila, 37, a friend and work colleague, told The Independent: ‘‘He was happy in London. He liked all the different cultures on his doorstep. He wanted to go home as a success.’’ Three days ago, shortly before 10 a.m., his modest ambition was terminated some 7,000 miles from home by a burst of 9 mm bullets from a Glock 17 pistol fired into his jaw and mouth at point-blank range by an officer from a Scotland Yard anti-terrorist unit. By a catastrophic coincidence, he was followed from his home and then pursued into a Tube carriage by plain-clothes police officers who suspected he was a suicide bomber. His fate was apparently decided by a cruel combination of improbability: that, used to the heat of Brazil, he should find a cool English summer's day too cold for dispense with wearing a bulky jacket. Secondly, his skin colour might make him appear Asian to his pursuers. Thirdly he shared a communal entrance to a block of flats with a suspected member of the terrorist cell that carried out last Thursday’s failed attack on London's transport system. His mother, Maria, told The Independent from the family home: ‘‘He was a worker. He was my life. I’m begging that the police be punished. It’s not fair to kill an innocent worker. I told him to take care with the violence in England. ‘‘But he just laughed. It’s a clean place, mum. The people are educated. There’s no violence in England. No one goes around carrying guns, not even police.’’ Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, expressed their ‘‘deep regret’’ for the young man’s death but insisted a shoot- to-kill policy for suspected suicide bombers would remain in place. His family were more direct. As he stood before a police tape preventing him from reaching Scotia Road, the quiet cul-de-sac where Jean Charles lived, his cousin, Alex Pereira, said: ‘‘He was murdered.’’ Mr Pereira, 27, from Norbury, south London, disputed the account of Scotland Yard that Jean Charles was challenged by the pursuing plain-clothes police officers as he stepped off a No. 2 bus at Stockwell Tube station, about two miles from his flat. He said: ‘‘Jean had lived in Sao Paulo. It is a dangerous city and he knew the rules there - if you run away when the police tell you to stop, then you are dead. He knows you don’t run away and his English was perfect. There is no explanation for him ignoring a warning because there was no warning.’’ — By arrangement with The Independent |
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3 Taliban fighters killed
Kandahar, July 27 The fight erupted late yesterday in Shah Joy district of the Zabul province, on a main highway between the capital Kabul and the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar province, local police commander Qauoom Jan said. “Three Taliban fighters were killed, two wounded,” Jan said. “They took away their dead and wounded Taliban fighters. We had five of our men wounded.” Purported Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdul Latif Hakimi, calling AFP from an unknown location, said 45 insurgents had initiated the hour-long gunfight and added that none of their fighters was killed and only one was wounded. “Only one of our mujahedin (Islamic holy warriors) was wounded,” he said. Taliban loyalists have stepped up their attacks on US and government forces in recent months after a winter lull in fighting and ahead of scheduled September parliamentary elections. US and Afghan troops killed dozens of militants in an attack on an insurgent hideout yesterday in neighbouring Uruzgan province, according to provincial officials. Two Afghan soldiers were also killed in the attack, in which American and Afghan troops and national police launched a three-pronged raid on a Taliban base in Deh Rawood district. — AFP |
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29 Pak women recommended for Nobel prize
Islamabad, July 27 South Asia is represented by 157 women, including 91 from India, Kamla Bhasin, a New Delhi-based Coordinator for South Asia, working to identify the women activists, told reporters in Lahore today. Bhasin, who is the Adviser for
Sangat, (South Asian Network of Gender Activists and Trainers), said the idea to promote women peace activists was floated by a Swiss woman following her experience in the Bosnia War and its impact on women.
— PTI |
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Kasuri wants US Congress not to discriminate
Islamabad, July 27 According to a foreign office statement, Mr Kasuri was talking to a six-member media delegation from Sri Lanka, which met him in his office here on Tuesday. Pakistan’s nuclear capability, the Foreign Minister said, was defensive and based on the minimum credible nuclear deterrence which would be maintained. “Pakistan’s nuclear programme and strategic assets are secure and under a strict and multi-layered custodial control,” he added. When asked about the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project, the Foreign Minister indicated that Pakistan would go ahead with the project even without India. “India was welcome to join this project if it so wanted,” he said, alluding to the cooling of India’s enthusiasm for the project since it signed the nuclear energy cooperation agreement with the US which opposes the plan. Mr Kasuri told the Sri Lankan journalists that for durable peace in South Asia it was essential to resolve the Kashmir issue to the satisfaction of the Kashmiris as well as that of India and Pakistan. While expressing satisfaction at the volume of the two-way trade between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, he said the Free Trade Agreement signed by the two countries recently would open “a new chapter in their bilateral relations”. |
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Bush looks forward to visiting India
Washington, July 27 “I know the President looks forward to visiting India next year,” he said here yesterday. Referring to the recent visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Washington, McClellan said “certainly he had a very good visit with Prime Minister Singh.” — PTI |
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G-4 using unethical means: Italy
United Nations, July 27 In a blistering attack, Italy’s UN envoy Marcello Spatafora said the G-4 comprising Brazil, Germany, India and Japan were “resorting to financial leverage and to financial pressures in order to induce a government to align, or not to align, itself with a certain position, or to co-sponsor or vote in favour of a certain draft”. Speaking after Canada introduced the “Uniting for Consensus” (UFC) resolution on the expansion of the Security Council last evening, Spatafora said what was at stake was the “credibility” of the organisation and of the reforms process. This was the third resolution to be introduced in the 191-member Assembly - the first was moved by G-4 and the second by African Union. None has been brought to vote
yet. — PTI |
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Dead baby removed from abdomen after 27 years
Jakarta, July 27 A team of 15 doctors operated for three hours yesterday to retrieve the 1.6-kg petrified baby from the 54-year-old woman, identified as Taminah, at the Sutomo general hospital in the Java island city of Surabaya. “This may be a world record. The woman has carried the dead but fully developed baby inside her for 27 years,” said doctor Urip Murtejo. He said the woman was otherwise healthy but had been referred to the hospital from her home of Bojenegoro, west of Surabaya, after complaining of occasional pains in her stomach. Taminah’s baby perished before birth in 1978 after it developed outside the womb. At the time she could not afford the surgery to extract it, Murtejo said.
— AFP |
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Lanka’s PM
nominated as next Presidential candidate
Colombo, July 27 According to a top SLFP stalwart, this “unanimous
decision” was taken at the 12-member party nomination committee
chaired by President Kumaratunga at the Janathipathi Mandiraya last
night. Although both the ruling alliance and the main Opposition have
nominated their candidates, the Election Commissioner is yet to announce
the date for the next presidential election. — UNI |
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The police arrested four men in central England early today in connection with last week’s failed bomb attacks on London and media reports said one of the suspected bombers was among those held.
