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Friday,
March 8, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Suharto’s
son indicted for murder Womb
transplant in Jeddah USA tells
Israel to shun war Pervez
promises equality to women
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34 Pak
artistes held for ‘vulgarity’ shows Affair
costs Congressmen his seat
UK Home Office helped Mittal Fanatics
burn down Indian flag
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Suharto’s son indicted for murder
Jakarta, March 7 The case poses a critical test of whether Indonesia's legal system, often criticised as corrupt, can be seen to be just in its treatment of a famous and powerful defendant. Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra, already in detention, is accused of masterminding the July 2001 murder of supreme court judge Syafiuddin Kartasasmita. Murder carries a maximum penalty of death. "I have submitted three dossiers...to the central Jakarta court today," central Jakarta prosecutor Andi Rachman Asbar told reporters. The dossiers charge Tommy with illegal arms possession, premeditated murder and avoiding sentences from corruption charges. All are being linked together as one charge, prosecutors said, a decision which has raised some eyebrows. "I see efforts to reduce and weaken charges against Tommy by bringing all the cases in one charge," Johnson Pandjaitan, deputy chief of the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association, told newsmen. "It will give Tommy a big opportunity to get away or at least to get a lower sentence." Tommy was caught by the police in November after spending almost a year on the run after a graft conviction. The best known of Suharto's six children, Tommy has been the only member of the former autocrat's family to face court over graft that made Indonesia a byword for corruption. In an example of the inconsistency that has been one factor in criticism of the country's justice system, Tommy's conviction in the graft case was actually overturned while he was on the run, but by that point he had become a suspect in other cases. His long evasion of arrest, despite his high profile reputation, reduced security authorities to objects of ridicule for some ordinary citizens. When he was finally seized analysts saw it as a political plus for the then four-months-old presidency of Megawati Sukarnoputri, who had made tightening the rule of law and clamping down on corruption key policy planks. "This whole saga...has been nothing but a charade. Whatever new game is being played out following Tommy's arrest, we should postpone any celebrations until we see real justice upheld," the Jakarta Post, one of Indonesia's leading newspapers, said in an editorial at the time. Questions grew among sceptics as police subsequently missed initial self-set dates for turning their evidence over to prosecutors and the prosecutors in turn took more time than expected to decide on charges once they had the police dossiers.
Reuters |
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Womb transplant in Jeddah
London, March 7 The surgery, which took place two years ago, was deemed a success by the Saudi team of doctors but the transplanted womb had to be removed 99 days later because of blood clotting. Dr Wafa Fageeh, who led the surgical team at the King Fahd Hospital in Jeddah, reported the research in the International Journal of Gynaecology and Obstetrics. He said the technique could be a useful treatment in the future for tens of thousands of infertile women whose only chance of having children was through surrogacy. “Further clinical trials and development of the surgical techniques could make uterine transplantation useful in the treatment of infertility, especially in communities where the surrogate mother concept is unacceptable from a religious or ethical point of view,” Fageeh said. Some doctors hailed the surgery as an exciting development, but a leading British fertility expert said the operation was a complete failure and could endanger women’s lives. “Blood clotting is exactly what you would expect and is what happened in all the experiments previously carried out in every experimental animal in which this has been done,” Robert Winston told BBC radio. “It is a great pity that women’s hopes have been raised in this way,” he added. The unidentified woman, who was 26 at the time of the transplant, received the womb of a woman 20 years older who had undergone hysterectomy. The recipient’s own womb had been removed following severe bleeding after a caesarean section. Fageeh said the transplanted womb had responded well and the woman, who had been given drugs to prevent her body rejecting the donated organ and hormones to increase the lining of the womb, had two normal periods before the organ was removed. In an editorial in the journal, Louis Keith of Northwestern University medical school and Giuseppe Del Priore of New York University Medical Center said, although a womb was not a life-saving organ, the importance of the achievement should not be under-estimated. “To some individuals, child-bearing is the greatest event of a lifetime. To such persons, transplantation of organs of reproduction would not be considered frivolous or unnecessary, even though these organs do not sustain life,” they said.
Reuters |
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USA tells Israel to shun war
Washington, March 7 “If you declare war against the Palestinians and think you can solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be killed — I don’t know if that leads you anywhere,” Mr Powell said while testifying before the House Appropriations Committee yesterday. As the violence in the region threatened to spiral out of control, Mr Powell asked Mr Sharon to “take a hard look at his policies.” Saying that no issue is “of a higher priority to the USA”, than the West Asian conflict, Mr Powell did not spare Palestine Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat either. “I’m not satisfied with the policies they’re following,” he said. “Both sides are following policies right now that will just lead to more violence.” Palestinians, said Mr Powell, are currently “under enormous difficulty,” since they are unable to get jobs or conduct commerce. Congressman Dan Miller a Republican from Florida, also criticised Israeli policies, saying that it appeared that the Israeli vigilante groups had blown up a Palestinian school. Mr Miller also condemned Israeli road closures which had adversely effected the Palestinian economy. Mr Powell dubbed Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe “an anachronism,” just three days ahead of the African nation’s presidential elections. Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Mugabe instituted new electoral rules which the opposition claims give him an unfair advantage in the hotly contested March 9-10 vote. Under his decree, potential voters have to prove they are residents of the constituency in which they will be casting their ballots, a measure more likely to affect urban dwellers, who tend to support the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). JERUSALEM: A Palestinian bomber blew himself up in the lobby of a hotel at the entrance to the Jewish settlement of Ariel in the West Bank on Thursday, wounding at least five people, police and medical workers said. Initial police reports said the bomber had set off his explosives in a supermarket. “It’s a suicide bomber and he’s dead,” a police spokesman said. The bombing was the latest incident in a spiral of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed that has taken their 17-month-old conflict to the brink of war. Witnesses said more people may have been wounded in the explosion. Ariel is one of the largest Jewish settlements in the West Bank, land that the Palestinians want for an independent state. Earlier, a fourth Palestinian was shot dead today by Israeli troops during their operation in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem, Palestinian security sources said. The sources named him as Tareq Abu Jaamus and said he was a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. He was the seventh Palestinian to be killed in fighting today. Two were killed in the Gaza Strip and one near Nablus. Gaza: Israeli fighter jets shot missiles at the Palestinian police headquarters here today, spewing rubble and glass hundreds of metres and sending children at a nearby school fleeing from the area, witnesses said. Ambulances sped to the scene of the attack on a main street in the centre of the city. It was not immediately clear if there were injuries. The compound has been standing largely empty in recent weeks since it has been targeted several times before. The headquarters used to contain 25 buildings, but only two remained standing after the latest air strike today. Amid the worst spate of violence since the start of the conflict, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised Israel would strike “with out letup” until Palestinian militants’ attacks on Israelis are reined in. “This is a really tough war we are in,” the Israeli leader told troops and Israeli officials at a military checkpoint south of Jerusalem. Sharon’s Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, however, said force was not the answer. “A cease-fire cannot be achieved just by using fire,” he told journalists in
Jerusalem. UNI, Reuters, AFP |
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Pervez promises equality to women
Islamabad, March 7 “Poverty has a female face and the emancipation of women holds the key to our progress,” he told a conference here on the eve of International Women’s Day. Musharraf said women were being associated at every level with his economic, political and social reforms. His government could only assist by framing laws and policies to empower women, he said. “But it depends on you, your determination and your courage to be emancipated. Rise and get your rights”, he told the women. Under the reforms, the gender gap in primary education is to be closed by 2010 by offering government school buildings to the private sector to run evening classes. The government would also fund a school feeding programme for 500,000 under-nourished girls in the 20 poorest districts in the country, he said. Women will be provided microcredits to start small businesses.
DPA |
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34 Pak artistes held
for ‘vulgarity’ shows Islamabad, March 7 Senior stage artistes have blamed the “high-handedness” of the local administration for the crackdown and said theatre managements and artistes should have been warned. The producers and artistes called the arrests uncivilised. Ataullah, a drama producer, said the authorities like the Home Department, the Punjab Arts Council and area magistrates approved the script and gave a no-objection certificate to theatre managements before staging a drama. So the arrests were unwarranted, he said. “There is a particular group in the district management that is bent upon destroying cultural activities in the city,” he said and added that police misbehaved with the actors. He said the way the raid was conducted was humiliating for the showbiz community. He said theatres were a source of recreation, but the arrests could lead to the closure of many theatres. The artistes have been accused of not abiding by the script and resorting to on-the-spot vulgar dialogues. “There are a few such senior actors but they know they could be banned for at least two years if they utter vulgar dialogue,” he said. Renowned stage performer Abida Beg said she had been performing for the past 30 years, but the arrest had dealt a blow to her dignity. She said artistes performed according to the demands of the public. “Unless there are dance performances in stage dramas, there can’t be crowds,” she said. Artiste Nasim Vickey said the crackdown was pre-planned and the district administration should not have resorted to an “extreme” action. There were some approving voices though. Senior TV and stage actor Nisar Qadri, however, said the crackdown was justified and was overdue as there was too much obscenity in theatres nowadays. |
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Musharraf
orders probe Meanwhile, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has taken strong exception to the “obscene” fashion shows organised recently in
Islamabad and Lahore during the Basant festival and ordered a probe into it. “We want to create a balance in society and pursue moderation and tolerance in line with our cultural values and traditions. But I am concerned over the tendency to go to the other extreme,” he was quoted by the daily The Nation as saying.
IANS, PTI |
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Affair costs Congressmen his seat Washington, March 7 Condit was first elected in 1989 and re-elected six times, but the missing intern has left a long shadow on his political life. This was reflected in his inability to get a party ticket to Congress Wednesday. In a primary election, the California State Democratic Party instead chose Dennis Cardoza of the state assembly who got 54 per cent of the votes for the nomination. Condit received 37 per cent of the votes. There had been speculation that Condit would not stand again after attracting widespread criticism over his behaviour during the inquiry into Levy’s disappearance last year. The young woman, who came from Condit’s constituency in Modesto, California, did journalism major and was an intern in the Bureau of Prison Reform which also came to an end last summer. She was last seen May 1, 2001 and has still not been found. Condit has repeatedly denied having anything to do with her disappearance although she visited him in his apartment now and then. Police do not consider him a suspect. Washington police sources said Condit had admitted he had an affair with Levy, although in media interviews he has refused to reveal the exact nature of their relationship. “I have done my job as a congressman, I have conducted myself as a gentleman,” he told reporters shortly after casting his own vote in the primary. “The only difference is the intrigue of what’s happened over the last summer.” The Democratic leadership said Condit’s refusal to admit he had an affair with Levy when the hunt for the missing intern first began irrevocably damaged his status, and the Congressman has been under tremendous pressure to resign. California Governor Gray Davis and the state’s two Senators distanced themselves from Condit. Once among the most popular Democrats in the House of Representatives, Condit, a right-wing Democrat, also lost the backing of his local party, despite campaigning very hard and paying special attention to ethnic groups and conducting door-to-door visits.
IANS |
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UK Home Office helped Mittal London, March 7 The office, admitted last night that it had asked the Belgian authorities to help the steel magnate to get him information about the 39-million pipeline deal, Joseph Colpen, a spokesman for the Brussels public prosecutors office told the Daily Mail. The British Home Office appeared to be acting like a lawyer or a personal adviser to Mr Mittal and not like a government department. We have strict rules about who can see confidential judicial files. They can be examined only by people directly involved in the case, such as the accused or victims, he added. UNI It is believed that it was about the same time when Mr Blair sent a letter to Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase last July to help Mittals LNM to buy the Romanian steel plant Sidex, the HomeOffice agreed to write to Belgian authorities.
UNI |
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Fanatics
burn down Indian flag Dhaka, March 7 Members of the Islamic Shasontantra Andolan’s or the Constitution Movement first vandalised the flag and then set it on fire, witnesses said. Some demonstrators scuffled with the police who tried to stop them from breaking the barricade created near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The protestors shouted slogans against the killings of Muslims in Gujarat and before dispersing announced holding a rally tomorrow after Friday prayers.
PTI |
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Jakarta, March 7
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