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Monday,
April 22, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Probe
reveals Omar ‘dealt with Pearl at ISI bidding’ Israeli
troops pull out of Nablus
Secret
germ warfare tests in UK |
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Blasts
kill 14 in Philippines Zamboanga (Philippines), April 21 Two explosions rocked a largely Christian city in the southern Philippines on Sunday, killing 14 people and wounding about 50, in what police said could be attacked by Muslim extremists.
Hundreds
of Bangladesh women in Pak brothels
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Probe reveals Omar ‘dealt with Pearl at ISI bidding’ London, April 21 The report in The Sunday Times, after a lengthy investigation, presents the fullest profile of Sheikh, yet points to vital clues that show the involvement of the ISI in terrorist actions carried out by him. Britain-born Sheikh knows too much about this connection to ever be allowed to leave Pakistan alive, the report says. The report says President Pervez Musharraf is reported to have told U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain that “I would rather hang Sheikh myself than have him extradited.” One “bizarre clue” the report mentions is the demand by Pearl’s kidnappers to honour an agreement to sell F-16 fighter aircraft to Pakistan. “This hardly squared with the outlook of a militant Muslim organisation fighting a jehad in Afghanistan and Kashmir,” the report says. The next clue comes with the revelation that Sheikh was in custody, the report says. On a visit to the USA, Musharraf announced on February 12 Sheikh had been captured by police in Lahore. But Sheikh shouted out in court that he had turned himself at the Home Secretary of the Punjab province, Brig Ejaz Shah, on February — a full week earlier. “It would appear that the ISI had its own reasons for holding Sheikh for a week before announcing to the world that he was in custody,” the report says. “One thing it would have wanted to do was to make sure its protégé did not give more away than absolutely necessary about his relationship with Pakistan’s intelligence services.” This “missing week” shed new light on Indian reports last October that Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, Director-General of the ISI, had been forced into retirement after FBI investigators uncovered credible links between him and Sheikh in the wake of September 11 attacks. According to these reports, the FBI team established that in early September, Ahmed had instructed Sheikh to transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, leader of the hijackers who crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11. “There is a further angle that implicates the ISI,” the report says. “It had strong reasons for tailing Pearl: he was normally based in India, which to the ISI was prima facie evidence that he was reporting back to Indian intelligence.” When the ISI discovered Pearl was trying to find out who was financing terror groups, it was the final straw, the report says. It quotes a source as saying: “He was beginning to get too close to understanding the links between the ISI and the “jehadis.” The source said: “Sheikh was their (the ISI’s) man and he was brought in to deal with Pearl; the ISI knew everything.” The report says the Karachi police, which deeply distrusts the ISI, leaked details of their interrogation of Sheikh in which he talked about his ISI links. As a result, ISI operatives broke into the newsroom of The News, the largest English language newspaper, in February. The News is edited by Shaheen Sehbai, the first local journalist Pearl contacted when he arrived in Pakistan. Failing to prevent publication of Sheikh’s confession, the ISI demanded an apology from Sehbai, who fled to the USA fearing for his life. The report quotes M.J. Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security and terrorism policy assessment group that has been researching Pearl’s murder, as saying: “Sheikh is a vital key that can open all the doors to the Al- Qaida network, to the links between the Pakistani military intelligence establishment and the terror groups, and can destroy Musharraf’s credibility with Washington.” The report says the full story of the kidnapping of Pearl will probably never come to light. Quoting documents, The Sunday Times said it has found evidence to show that Sheikh, was close to the radical Pakistani cleric Maulana Masood Azhar — a close associate of Bin Laden,” the report said. Sheikh was first introduced to Azhar nine years ago in a training camp for Islamic guerrillas in Afghanistan. India released both of them in 1998 in exchange for passengers of a hijacked Indian Airlines plane held hostage in Kandahar. Even though he denies the latest charges against him, he has admitted involvement in a string of kidnappings since 1994 and the attack on the Indian Parliament last December. Meanwhile, the assets of Abu Hamza, one of Britain’s most radical Islamic fundamentalists, are to be frozen Hamza, a claw-handed cleric who preaches Islamic holy war at the Finsbury Park mosque in North London, is on a list of terrorist suspects published this weekend by G7 Finance Ministers at their Washington summit. The US Treasury said Hamza (43) was one of the 10 “terrorist financiers” who were “all linked” to Al-Qaida and Bin Laden. The cleric is accused of being a “legal officer” to the “Islamic Army” of Aden, a terrorist group that has kidnapped foreigners.
IANS, PTI |
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Israeli
troops pull out of Nablus
Nablus (West Bank), April 21 "The withdrawal from Nablus is complete," an Israeli army spokesman said. The pullout was delayed as soldiers removed several Hassidic Jews who had slipped into Nablus to hold unauthorised prayers at a shrine, military sources said. Israel says its troops will besiege Arafat's Ramallah compound until he hands over three people suspected of assassinating an Israeli cabinet minister. Arafat has offered to put them on trial, but not extradite them. It also wants to arrest Fuad Shubaki, Arafat's chief financial officer, whom it suspects of smuggling arms from Iran to the Palestinian territories. Witnesses said tanks had departed from three strategic points in the centre, north and western parts of Nablus while other army vehicles had quit the nearby Balata refugee camp. The Israeli Government promised on Saturday to cooperate with a UN Security Council mission to probe its crushing assault on the Jenin refugee camp, the scene of the fiercest battles of Israel’s West Bank offensive. Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein said today that Israel could declare UN special envoy Terje Roed-Larsen “persona non grata” following his criticism of Israeli actions in Jenin, public radio reported.
Rubinstein raised the possibility at the weekly meeting of the Israeli cabinet, saying that there were grounds to consider the UN envoy persona non grata, the report said without elaborating. Roed-Larsen had described the destruction of the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin, the scene of an intense nine-day battle earlier this month, as “totally unacceptable and horrific beyond belief”. JERUSALEM:
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared an end to ‘‘this stage’’ of Israel’s West Bank offensive today after tanks rumbled out of two more Palestinian cities. ‘‘We have finished this stage of the operation called Defensive Shield,’’ Sharon told reporters. ‘‘We have achieved very profound results but the struggle against terrorism continues. However, this time, it will work according to a different method.’’ He was apparently referring to Israeli buffer zones which he wants to establish inside the West Bank to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching Israel.
Reuters, AFP |
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Secret germ warfare tests in UK London, April 21 A government report just released provides for the first time a comprehensive official history of Britain’s biological weapons trails between 1940 and 1979. Many of these tests involved releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and micro-organisms over vast swaths of the population without the public being told. While details of some secret trials have emerged in recent years, the 60-page report reveals new information about more than 100 covert experiments. The tests, carried out by government scientists at Porton Down, were designed to help the MoD assess Britain’s vulnerability if the Russians were to have released clouds of deadly germs over the country. In more cases, the trials did not use biological weapons, but alternatives which scientists believed would mimic germ warfare and which the MoD claimed were harmless. But families in certain areas of the country who have children with birth defects are demanding a public inquiry. One chapter of the report, “The Fluorescent Particle Trials”, reveals how between 1955 and 1963 planes flew from north-east England to the south-west along the south and west coasts, dropping huge amounts of zinc cadmium sulphide on the population. The chemical drifted miles inland, its fluourescene allowing the spread to be monitored. In another trail using zinc cadmium sulphide, a generator was towed along a road near Frome in Somerset, south-west England where it spewed the chemical for an hour. While the UK Government has insisted the chemical is safe, cadmium is recognised as a cause of lung cancer and during the Second World War was considered by the Allies as a chemical weapon. In another chapter, “Large Area Coverage Trials”, the MoD describes how between 1961 and 1968 more than a million people along the south coast of England, from Torquay to the New Forest, were exposed to bacteria, including
E.coli and bacillus globigii, which mimics anthrax. These releases came from a military ship, the Icewhale, anchored off the Dorset coast, which sprayed the micro-organisms in a five to 10-mile radius. The report also reveals details of the DICE trials in south Dorset between 1971 and 1975. These involved spraying into the air massive quantities of serratia marcescens bacteria, together with an anthrax
stimulant and phenol. Experiments conducted between 1964 and 1973 involved attaching germs to the threads of spiders’ webs in boxes to test how the germs would survive in different environments. These tests were carried out in a dozen locations across the country, including London’s West End, Southampton and Swindon. The report also gives details of more than a dozen smaller field trials between 1968 and 1977.
The Observer, London |
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Blasts kill 14 in Philippines Zamboanga (Philippines), April 21 Sunday’s bombings in the city of General Santos were the bloodiest in the mainly Christian country. A home-made bomb left in a parked pedicab exploded in front of a crowded shopping mall in the southern city, while 10 minutes later, another bomb thrown by unidentified attackers exploded and rocked a residential compound in the city. After the explosions, a man who said he represented the Abu Sayyaf guerrilla group, which operates in the country’s south and is linked by the USA to the Al-Qaeda network, called local RMN radio and claimed responsibility for the blasts. The man, who identified himself as Abu Muslim Al Ghazi, called the RMN radio and said “we did it,” station manager Elmer Ubaldo said.
Reuters |
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8 Maoists shot dead Kathmandu, April 21 The rebels plan a five-day nationwide strike from Tuesday to pressure the government to resume negotiations. A meeting of parties in Nepal's Parliament appealed yesterday to the Maoists to call off the strike. The party leaders, who included representatives from the ruling Nepali Congress and opposition parties, said a cancellation of the strike would show a willingness by the Maoists to enter talks.
AFP |
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Hundreds
of Bangladesh women in Pak brothels Dhaka, April 21 More than 750 women who went missing during the 1971 liberation war were found in brothels and houses in Pakistan, vernacular daily Bhorer Kagoj said in a report today quoting a release of the War Crime Facts Finding Committee. The committee, however, did not cite any proof in support of its claim. Many of those hapless women who were taken to Pakistan by the people in uniform or others as sex-slaves died in captivity, said the committee.
PTI |
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