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Sunday,
January 6, 2002, Chandigarh, India   
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Omar ‘escapes’ from Helmand province
1st Afghan film to be shot in 10 years
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200 Islamic
ultras held Bangladesh ex-President refutes Hasina’s charge Zacarias asks court to televise trial Israeli troops pull out of
Tel village
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Omar ‘escapes’ from Helmand province
Kandahar, January 5 Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had been hiding out in the remote Baghran region in a northern corner of Helmand province since fleeing his power base in the southern city of Kandahar on December 7, but had now disappeared, officials said. “There aren’t any Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Baghran now,” said an official speaking for Kandahar intelligence chief Haji Gullalai. “Mullah Omar is also not in Baghran. “We know from our intelligence that Mullah Omar is not in Baghran, and not in Helmand province. He is somewhere else,” said the official, who declined to be identified. “I don’t know where Mullah Omar is now,” he said. Tribal elders and US forces had thought Omar had taken refuge in mountainous Baghran, a northern corner of southern Helmand province, after he surrendered Kandahar on December 7. His disappearance, just days after US officials said they had lost all trace of Bin Laden, is embarrassing for the new interim administration in Kabul as well as for the USA, with special forces on the ground backed by jets and spy planes prowling the skies. Washington holds the reclusive cleric responsible for providing Bin Laden and his Al-Qaida network with a safe haven from which to carry out its operations against US and other targets and has put a bounty on Mullah Omar’s head. Mullah Omar, who gave refuge to Bin Laden after he arrived in Afghanistan in 1996, may still be in contact with the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and sliced into the Pentagon, Afghan officials have said. While some Taliban and Opposition commanders in Baghran had surrendered, Bin Laden had disappeared into the inhospitable jagged mountains and steep-sided canyons of Afghanistan. “There were some local commanders there and we talked to them,” said the official in Kandahar. “Some of them have surrendered and others are expected to surrender soon,” he said. But the greatest prize appeared to have escaped the net — apparently in a convoy of motorcycles, the BBC reported. “There is no fighting, we are talking,” said the official, adding that no US forces were now in Baghran. A day earlier, new Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said in Kabul that the cleric who founded the fundamentalist Taliban was probably in Baghran and may be sent to an international tribunal as a war criminal when caught. But Amir Mohammad Akhandzada, chieftain of the town of Kajaki and brother of Mullah Sher Mohammad Akhandzada, governor of Helmand province, was adamant that he was not in the region. “If Mullah Omar was here, if we knew he was here and we captured him we would kill him ourselves,” he told Reuters yesterday. Reuters
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Parents buy back jehadi sons from Kabul Pakistani jehadis, who have been captured in Afghanistan, are being bought at prices ranging from Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000 per head by influential Afghan commanders, who, in turn, sell them to their parents in Pakistan at much higher prices. Some Pakistani parents have paid as much as Rs 2 lakh to get their sons back, but not all can afford to pay such high prices, Pakistani journal The Friday Times reported today, quoting jehadis who had managed to return home. To get back their sons, many of whom have been killed or are rotting in ill-equipped jails in Afghanistan, the parents, who are unable to pay high prices, are pressurising the Tehrik-i-Nifaaz-i-Mohammdai (TNM), the organisation which sent thousands of Pakistanis to Afghanistan for waging the holy war or jehad. The journal reports that the organisation and its leaders, as a result, now stand discredited and are hiding from anxious parents. These jehadis had gone to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban and Al-Qaida. The TNM is an ultra orthodox organisation in the Malakand division of the north-west frontier province of Pakistan, headed by Maulana Sufi Mohammad. Sufi was arrested on his return and is now in a jail at Dera Ismail Khan, about 300 km from Peshawar. UNI
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1st Afghan film to be shot in 10 years
Kabul, January 4 Entitled “The Speculator”, it is directed by Sayed Faruk Haybat and is due for completion towards the end of January. It deals, Haybat said, with the evils of speculating in currency and goods — a common practice in Afghanistan. The film is being specially made for screening on the Afghan television, according to Haybat, because the station — which restarted within hours of the Taliban fleeing Kabul on November 12 — is short of material. Nazir Ahmad Fazli, the director of cinema at Afghan television, said 30 films had been discovered in the archives but most of them had been damaged due to poor storage conditions. Others contained rape scenes or showed women as stars-making them unsuitable for screening in Afghanistan where, despite the toppling of the Taliban, the society is still conservative. The new movie brings together again some veterans of the Afghan cinema industry, many of whom studied in India and Moscow and who projected the local industry on to the international big screens in the 1970s. But many film producers, especially those who worked on politico-social movies, have fled the country. AFP
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Strikes to go
on: US envoy
Kabul, January 5 |
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200 Islamic
ultras held
Karachi, January 5 Some of those picked up are sympathetic to groups fighting Indian rule in the Himalayan region of Kashmir and blamed for the December 13 attack on India’s Parliament that has prompted New Delhi to demand the arrests even as it masses troops on its border with Pakistan. Some groups had asked their members to go underground to avoid the crackdown, which General Musharraf had frequently said he was willing to launch but had been deterred by concerns about a violent backlash by their supporters. The activists, most from the extremist Sunni Muslim Sipah-e-Sahaba group, were detained in cities across central province of Punjab and in southern Sindh late last night and early today, police sources said. “It is a continuing process. Our crackdown on religious extremists and terrorists will continue,” an Interior Ministry official said. In southern Pakistan, witnesses said the police raided at least four places in the city of Hyderabad last night looking for members of the radical Sipah-e-Sahaba. It was not immediately clear how many people were picked up in those raids. The Sipah-e-Sahaba has been accused of involvement in frequent outbreaks of sectarian violence across Pakistan, usually focusing their attacks on Shi’ite mosques. Khadim Hussain Dhalon, central secretary-general of Sipah-e-Sahaba, told Reuters more than 100 activists of the party had been detained in overnight raids in Sindh and Punjab. “They detained our people in mosques during dawn prayers,” he said, adding that as many as 300 members of the group had been detained in the last three days. “We have asked our workers to go underground,” he said. He accused the government of carrying out the detentions to appease India and the USA. “We will continue to support the Kashmiri struggle whether the government supports it or not,” he said. Izhar Bokhari, spokesman for the Shi’ite group Tehrik-e-Jaffria Pakistan, told Reuters 40 activists of the party had been arrested in Punjab and Sindh. The detentions came as diplomatic efforts to defuse a military standoff between India and Pakistan, sparked by last month’s raid on Parliament in New Delhi, gathered pace and the two countries’ leaders were attending a regional summit in Nepal. Reuters
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Bangladesh
ex-President refutes Hasina’s charge Dhaka, January 5 His statement has been prominently displayed in the front pages by all local dailies. It has again been criticised by the acting Awami League chief, former Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad. Awami League President Sheikh Hasina is now in London and is expected to return home on January 10. She went in the first week of December, 2001, to Florida, USA, to meet her daughter and son there. The sharp reaction of Mr Ahmed came on the remark made by Ms Hasina at a gathering of party supporters in New York recently where she reiterated her allegation that Justice Ahmed has betrayed with her party. She said that her party elected him as the President in 1997, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) boycotted the election. But President Justice Shahabuddin acted to defeat the Awami League in the October 1 Parliament elections and the BNP won the election. Another allegation against him was that he had mobilised armed forces during the election with ulterior motive. The third allegation against him is that as per his suggestion the trial of the killers of founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was held in a normal session court. The allegation was made because the normal trial has delayed the process and the confirmation of the death sentences against 12 accused is still pending in the Supreme Court. Justice Ahmed claimed that Ms Hasina during a meeting with him before her term was over said that as because he was President she could complete her full term in office. Now after the defeat of her party in the election she was blaming him for the defeat. He claimed that Ms Hasina had selected the army chief and as Supreme Commander he had appointed the man. The army was mobilised to supervise law and order considering the precedence of 1991 and 1996. He denied that he ever made any suggestion about holding the trial of killers of Sheikh Mujib in the sessions court. He claimed it as her government’s decision. Justice Ahmed also criticised a columnist based in London for his comments. The columnist in a series of commentaries in a Dhaka daily levelled some allegations against him. The dailies referred to the entry into political arena of Bangladesh by the then Chief Justice of the country Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed, on December 6, 1990, when military ruler President H.M. Ershad had to step down on the face of Opposition’s agitation. Justice Ahmed became the acting President, arranged general elections on February 27, 1991, that was acclaimed home and abroad as free and fair. Later through an amendment of the Constitution he returned to his duty as the Chief Justice. After his retirement he was nominated by the Awami League for the post of the President of Bangladesh. The BNP legislators walked out of the Parliament before the vote for electing him was taken up in the
Parliament, the electoral college. The Awami League, Jatiya Party and the Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal, components of the government of consensus headed by Sheikh Hasina voted him to the highest office. |
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Zacarias asks court to televise trial
Alexandria (Virginia), January 5 “Mr Moussaoui recognises that the American criminal justice system will be on display for the entire world as the trial of this action proceeds,” said a defence motion supporting a proposal by Court TV to carry the proceedings. Televising the trial will “add an additional layer of protection to see these proceedings are fairly conducted,” his lawyers argued in the motion. Normally, cameras are banned from federal courtrooms although the Oklahoma City bombing trial was shown on closed circuit TV to the victims’ families. The government is expected to weigh in later today with its recommendation. Moussaoui’s motion asked the judge not to permit televising any pretrial proceedings. Jury selection is set to begin September 30, with opening arguments to begin about two weeks later. The defence expressed concern that anything said during pretrial arguments and during jury selection could prejudice potential jurors who may “become exposed to information that will not be admissible at trial.” The defence motion also asked that if the jury wasn’t sequestered — confined after trial hours to a hotel or secure location to avoid publicity — TV cameras should be restricted to live coverage. AP
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Israeli troops pull out of
Tel village Nablus (West Bank), January 5 An army spokesman confirmed the end of the incursion yesterday evening, saying that the soldiers who had moved into the area had killed a Palestinian armed with an M16 assault rifle and wearing a bullet-proof vest, after they came under fire. The head of the Israeli forces in the West Bank, Gen Gershon Yitzhak, said earlier on the radio that the operation had avoided a “bloody incident”. Israeli units backed by tanks and helicopters entered the village in the north of the West Bank and imposed a curfew early yesterday, residents said. AFP |
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19 killed in Iran minibus crash Teheran, January 5 A police investigation blamed the driver of the minibus for reckless driving. Iran has one of the highest road accidents rates in the world with around 15,000 killed every year — one every 35 minutes.
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