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Women level charges against Saddam
119 feared killed in Iran plane crash
Poem on Bush deleted from school textbook
US fails to take adequate steps against terror: panel
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36 Iraqi policemen killed in suicide attack
Maoists abduct 65 villagers
Seven soldiers killed in landmine blast
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Women level charges against Saddam
Baghdad, December 6 Saddam sat stone-faced, taking notes on a pad of paper, as the woman, known only as “witness A,” told the court how she and dozens of other families from the town of Dujail were arrested in a crackdown after a 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam. “I was forced to take off my clothes, and he raised my legs up and tied up my hands. He continued administering electric shocks and beating me,” she said of her detention, referring to Wadah al-Sheik, an Iraqi intelligence officer who died of cancer last month. Several times, the woman - hidden behind a light blue curtain - broke down in tears. “God is great. Oh, my Lord,” she moaned, her voice electronically deepened and distorted. She strongly suggested she had been raped, but did not say so outright. When Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin asked her about the “assault,” she said: “I was beaten up and tortured by electrical shocks.” The witness, who was 16 at the time of her arrest, repeated that she had been ordered to undress. “I begged them, but they hit with their pistols,” she said. “They made me put my legs up. There were five or more, and they treated me like a banquet.” “Is that what happens to the virtuous woman that Saddam speaks about?” she wept, prompting the judge to advise her to stick to the facts. The measures taken to preserve the woman’s anonymity complicated the testimony. At first, defence attorneys complained they could not hear her because of the voice distortion. The judge then ordered the voice modulator shut off, but then the audience could not hear at all, so Amin ordered a recess, and the modulator was fixed, allowing the press and audience to hear. Defence attorneys insisted on questioning the witness face to face and demanded that the defendants should also see her. So after she gave her testimony for over an hour, Amin ordered the session closed to the public, pulling screens in front of the press and visitors gallery and cut the sound. Later, a second woman took the stand, identified as witness B. She said she was 74-year-old and recounted how her family was arrested in 1981. Until that point in her testimony, her voice was modulated. Witnesses have the option of not having their identities revealed as a security measure to protect them against reprisals by Saddam loyalists.
— AP |
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119 feared killed in Iran plane crash
Tehran, December 6 All 94 persons on the plane were killed, most of them Iranian journalists heading to cover military manoeuvers in the south. Twentyfive residents of the apartment building also died and 90 were injured, Tehran state radio said. A large gash was torn in the top floor of the 10-storyed building. Flames leaped out of widows from the roof and several other floors as panicked residents fled the Towhid residential complex, a series of high-rise apartment buildings for army personnel in the Azadi suburb of Tehran. Wreckage rained down, hitting a nearby gas station, the police said. Cars parked below were smashed by falling debris. At the foot of the blackened building, what appeared to be a pile of wreckage was in flames. Firefighters managed to put out the fire in the building, which was damaged and charred but still standing. The police cordoned of the area, preventing journalists and a crowd of thousands of people from nearing the site. Many in the crowd were screaming, afraid heir relatives had been killed.
— AP |
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Poem on Bush deleted from school textbook
Islamabad, December 6 The 20-line anonymous poem, The Leader, lists the qualities of “a man who will do what he must” and bears a passing resemblance to Rudyard Kiplings, IF. “Ever assuring he will stand by his word; Wanting the world to join his firm stand; Bracing for war, but praying for peace; Using his power so evil will cease,” run typical lines. The English-language Daily Times said the Education Ministry had no idea who wrote the poem and how it found its way into a textbook of English for Class 11 last year. The acrostic is highly embarrassing for President Pervez Musharraf, who is already under fire at home for being allegedly pro-American and supporting the US war against terrorism. The decision to remove the poem was taken at a meeting yesterday which was attended by senior Education Ministry officials. “We have decided to delete the poem from the book, published by the National Book Foundation and prescribed for federal board students,” an Education Ministry spokesman said. He said, “It will be stretching the matter too far to assert that the poem was inserted in the book deliberately to enumerate the qualities of the American President.” The official added the ministry was investigating how a series of committees employed to monitor and censor the contents of all textbooks failed to notice the acrostic. The poem would not appear in the next edition of the book, he added. The book was printed in 2004 for the first time after the government decided to deregulate the publication of textbooks.
— UNI |
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US fails to take adequate steps against terror: panel
Washington, December 6 Issuing its last report card reviewing how the commission’s 41 recommendations have been implemented, the former members have given five “failing” grades or “F” to the government, including one, on not providing adequate emergency communications. Mr Kean charged that airline passengers were not being screened against a watchlist and funding for homeland security was more along “pork barrel politics” than risks. “We are all frustrated at the lack of urgency addressing these various problems,” he added. The best grade, the Bush Administration received was an A minus in the category of counter-terrorist financing. The White House quickly defended the administration’s track record in the protecting American people. “We have taken significant steps to better protect the American people at home. There is more to do. This is the President’s highest responsibility,” the spokesman Scot McClellan said. “I think we’ve too quickly forgotten the lesson of 9/11 and I think the odds are very good that we’re going to pay a terrible price for forgetting that lesson,” said Republican Commissioner James Thompson, a former Illinois governor. Democrats wasted no time attacking the administration and seizing the opportunity presented by the National Commission. The House Minority Leader, Ms Nancy Pelosi termed the report as an indictment of counter-terrorism efforts. “When will our government wake up to this challenge?” Democratic Commissioner Timothy Roemer remarked.” Al-Qaida is quickly changing and we are not... We are skating on thin ice. That ice is getting thinner and about to crack,” he
said. — PTI |
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36 Iraqi policemen killed in suicide attack
Baghdad, December 6 Initial reports from the US military had said at least 27 police officers and academy students were killed and another 32 wounded in the attack, which comes just nine days before Iraq holds parliamentary elections. “Two suicide bombers attacked an Iraqi police academy in east Baghdad around 12:45 pm (1515 IST),” the military said in a statement. “Two females, each wearing a suicide vest, walked into a classroom at the academy and detonated in the midst of students,” it added. It remains unclear how the two women were able to breach heavy security in place around the academy, where roads have been sealed off by Iraqi police in a bid to prevent such bombings. Women, however, are not always subject to the same stringent security checks as men in largely conservative Iraq where it is deemed inappropriate for male guards to frisk women or girls. The deadly blast came after 19 Iraqi soldiers were killed in an ambush just north of the Sunni Muslim flashpoint town of Baquba on Saturday.
— AFP |
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Maoists abduct 65 villagers
Kathmandu, December 6 The rebels abducted the villagers comprising many teachers from Gajari and Pokhari village of the district, they said. In another development, one of the three youths abducted by the rebels from Malakheti village of Kailali district has returned and surrendered before the local administration. He has also handed over a pistol and bullets. |
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Seven soldiers killed in landmine blast
Colombo, December 6 Six soldiers and a captain were riding in a tractor-trailer near the Nallur temple in Jaffna, when they ran over a claymore mine, military officials said. “The soldiers were on a foot patrol and after their work they were returning to base in a tractor when they were hit,” spokesman Brigadier Nalin Witharanage told reporters here. Army chief Lt-General Sarath Fonseka, who joined office here today, said his top priority would be to try and stop military losses and asserted that his force was ready to meet any LTTE threat.
— PTI |
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