Karachi, August 25
Pakistan’s main grouping of hardline Islamists today urged President Pervez Musharraf not to pardon an Indian awaiting execution, saying it would be a sign of weakness on the part of Pakistan.

The Supreme Court last week upheld a death sentence imposed on Manjit Singh in 1991 for spying for India’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, and involvement in several bombings.

The decision stirred emotions in India after the man’s family threatened suicide if the execution was carried out and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Tuesday he would speak to his Pakistani counterpart Shaukat Aziz to try to stop the execution.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri yesterday said, it was up to General Musharraf, who is to meet the Indian premier in New York next month, to decide on any pardon.

Mr Munawar Hassan, secretary-general of Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest party in a six-party Islamist opposition alliance, said even to talk about pardoning him was an insult to the nation.

‘’Spying is an accepted crime all over the world and there is no mercy for a spy anywhere,’’ he told Reuters. ‘’If the general is showing latitude in this regard that means he is handing his gloves to the Indian side.’’

‘’He (Musharraf) is very sensitive about the people involved in attacks on himself, so how can he be so insensitive about those who are involved in attacks on the country?’’

Last week, Pakistan hanged a soldier convicted of plotting to assassinate General Musharraf in 2003.

Manjit Singh was convicted of involvement in three bomb blasts in the Pakistani cities of Lahore and Faisalabad and a case linking him to another in Multan is still pending.

Najam Sethi, editor of Pakistan’s Daily Times newspaper, said General Musharraf faced a difficult decision.

‘’Certainly the pressure from the Indian side is rising, and though no official request has been made so far, it would not be easy to turn down a request from Dr Manmohan Singh,’’ he said.

Death sentences are often handed down but rarely carried out in Pakistan. While an appeal to General Musharraf is a last resort in the legal process, an execution could still take years to carry out even if he were to reject it. — Reuters

United Nations, August 25
A United Nations human rights expert on Tuesday asked the UK not to deport anybody under its new anti-terrorism law to a country where there is a risk of torture or ill-treatment, warning that the proposed assurances it would seek were not an adequate guarantee and circumvented its treaty obligations.

“The fact that such assurances are sought shows in itself that the sending country perceives a serious risk of the deportee being subjected to torture or ill-treatment upon arrival in the receiving country,” the UN Commission on Human Rights’s special rapporteur on questions relevant to torture, Manfred Nowak, said in a statement.

He called on governments to refrain from seeking diplomatic assurances and the conclusion of memoranda of understanding to circumvent their international obligation not to deport anybody if there is a serious risk of torture or ill-treatment.

“Diplomatic assurances are not an appropriate tool to eradicate this risk,” he added, citing British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s statement of August 5 indicating that the UK would deport persons to their home countries even in cases where these countries have been found to violate the absolute prohibition of torture.

Mr Nowak disputed Mr Blair’s contention that such understandings with receiving countries that deportees would not be tortured or ill-treated constituted a sufficient guarantee to avoid violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

“The Special Rapporteur fears that the plan of the United Kingdom to request diplomatic assurances for the purpose of expelling persons in spite of a risk of torture reflects a tendency in Europe to circumvent the international obligation not to deport anybody if there is a serious risk that he or she might be subjected to torture,” he said.

London, August 25
The youngest of the July 7 London bombers made three desperate telephone calls begging for help from the other members of the terror cell just minutes before he blew himself up on a bus.

The frantic last messages of Hasib Hussain, 18, are seen by Scotland Yard as vivid proof that the British-born Muslim extremists knew they were going to die in the attacks, ‘The Times’ daily reported today.

The teenager clearly panicked when he realized he could not get on to a Northern Line Tube to detonate his rucksack bomb as the service had been suspended because of a broken down train.

Knowing that all four men were supposed to synchronise the timing of the explosions, Hussain ran out of King’s Cross Underground station and tried to reach his accomplices by mobile telephone.

It was just before 9:00 a.m., but by then all his fellow bombers were already dead. The other three had triggered their devices within seconds of one another at 8.50 a.m.

Moscow, August 25
A blast today in a southern Russian province bordering Chechnya killed at least one man and wounded three more, including the local Prime Minister, just one week before the anniversary of the Beslan school siege.

A spokesman for Ingushetia’s emergencies service said local Prime Minister Ibrahim Malsagov’s car had been damaged by a bomb blast in the centre of the region’s key town of Nazran.

He said Malsagov, 44, and three other people were rushed to hospital, where the premier’s security guard died. Russian news agencies said Malsagov’s wounds were not life-threatening.

Interfax news agency quoted a senior police official as saying there had also been an earlier, smaller explosion intended to divert the security forces’ attention.

Police gave no indication as to who may have been behind the blasts, the second such incident in four days. On Monday, one person was killed and another two injured when a bomb went off near Nazran’s main hospital.

Monday’s blast was officially described as an act of “terrorism”, the usual reference to separatist guerrillas from Chechnya and their local allies.

Moscow has been battling Chechen separatists for 10 years and the violence frequently spills over into neighbouring regions. — Reuters

Dubai, August 25
India has blacklisted 11 Qatari companies and put 35 others on a watch list for mistreating its nationals working in the country.

The 11 firms have been removed from the Indian Embassy’s prior approval category in Qatar and will not be entitled to employ Indian workers any more.

The firms include engineering, construction and contracting, garment manufacture as well as manpower recruiting agencies, an Indian official told the Peninsula newspaper.

The official said the Ministry of Labour in New Delhi had been notified.

Companies on the watch list are to be observed over a period of time and if they improve their track record of treating their Indian employees well, they could be removed from the list. — PTI

Islamabad, Aug 25
An Indian woman seeking Pakistani citizenship after getting married to her cousin here has moved the Peshawar High Court to restrain the government from taking any adverse action against her after her visa expired.

Afsina Bibi, who hails from Ahmedabad, got married to Arshid Mahmood, a Pakistani citizen in 1997. However, she came to Pakistan only in May. Her visit visa expired on August 19.

The woman applied for Pakistani citizenship on Tuesday and has now requested the court to restrain the government from taking any adverse action against her.

The Peshawar High Court on Tuesday put on notice the federal government and other respondents on the writ petition.

Bibi’s advocate told the court that the woman was legally entitled to get Pakistani citizenship under the Citizenship Act, local daily “Dawn” reported. — PTI