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Wednesday,
July 2, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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5 get
death sentence for killing 28 Tamils Lanka
arrests 250 Pak migrants |
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US support
to Pak to continue: report Bailiff
appointed to produce Sharif’s kin US court
frees LeT accomplice Post-Sept
11, USA still unprepared for terror attack UN
N-body chief to visit Teheran
Suu Kyi
shifted from Insein jail Pak
restricts sale of cigarettes
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Blast in Iraqi mosque kills 5
Fallujah (Iraq), July 1 Iraqi civilians said the blast was caused by a missile or bomb strike, but American soldiers at the scene disputed that account, saying it was likely caused when explosives hidden at the site went off. The incident was likely to increase tension in the town, already the scene of several confrontations between US soldiers and anti-American insurgents. Witnesses said the blast occurred just before 11 pm yesterday in a small cinderblock building in the courtyard of the mosque. The explosion blew out the walls and took down the ceiling of the structure. About a dozen Iraqis were gathered around the blast today morning, sifting through the rubble for pieces of metal they said proved the damage was caused by an American attack. “These are pieces of a missile,” said Aqeel Ibrahim Ali, 26, who was standing on a concrete slab overlooking the destruction, holding out a box filled with metal shards. “An airplane shot a missile.” — AP
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5 get death sentence for killing 28 Tamils
Colombo, July 1 Two police officers were among the convicted for failing to prevent hundreds of villagers from murdering the inmates in the “rehabilitation camp”, situated in Bandarawela, 220 km east of the capital, on October 24, 2000. A court said the two officers encouraged the villagers who stormed the camp and carried out the massacre using clubs and iron rods. The three villagers were among 800 others who stormed the camp seeking revenge against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) suspects. The death penalty in Sri Lanka, however, currently does not exist, and the five will have their sentences converted to a maximum 20 years’ hard labour imprisonment. Fourteen inmates injured in the massacre were rescued by the government troops sent to the area.
— DPA |
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Lanka arrests 250 Pak migrants Colombo, July 1 The police said 183 Pakistanis were arrested aboard a Maldivian ship with a Russian captain off the southern coast, and another 71 were picked up on the nearby beach. ‘’They were about to go to Italy. We had the ship under surveillance for several days,’’ said police spokesman Rienzie Perera. He said five Sri Lankans were also arrested in the raid. The police has said the Indian Ocean island is becoming a transit point for illegal migration.
— Reuters |
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US support to Pak to continue: report
Washington, July 1 The Congressional Research Service (CRS), a part of the Library of Congress which advises Congress members, has stated in an updated report on Pakistan that Mr Musharraf’s actions undermine Pakistani democracy but the Bush administration has, nevertheless, indicated its full support to him. “In August 2002, President Musharraf took unilateral action in announcing a ‘legal framework order’ (LFO) of constitutional changes. The most important of these provide greatly enhanced powers to the Pakistani President, a title assumed by Musharraf and ostensibly legitimised by a controversial April 2002 referendum,” it said. “Key changes to the Constitution include the creation of a military-dominated National Security Council (NSC), provisions allowing the President to dismiss the National Assembly, and provisions calling for the presidential appointment of armed services chiefs.” In response to General Musharraf’s imposition of constitutional revisions, the USA indicated that full support to him would continue even if some of the changes “could make it more difficult to build strong democratic institutions in Pakistan,” the report said. “US concerns about Pakistani democracy exist in tandem with the perceived need to have a stable and effectively-administered frontline ally in the international anti-terrorism coalition,” the report said. Despite the Musharraf government’s insistence that elections in the country were free and fair, Opposition parties, human rights groups and independent observers from the European Union called it “deeply flawed,” accusing the military-led regime of manipulating candidates’ eligibility and public demonstration ordinances as a means of influencing the electoral outcome, the report said. “Turnout was estimated to have been lower than any previous Pakistani national election, causing numerous observers to identify a pervasive apathy among the country’s citizens with regard to national politics,” it said. The Islamist coalition in North-West Frontier Province passed a Shariat Bill in the provincial Assembly, the report said, adding that a similar Bill might be passed in Baluchistan. “These laws,” says CRS, “seek to replicate in Pakistan the harsh enforcement of Islamic law seen in Afghanistan under the Taliban.
— PTI |
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Bailiff appointed to produce Sharif’s kin Islamabad, July 1 Acting on a petition filed by Mr Sharif’s lawyer Ashtar Ausaf Ali alleging that the police had laid siege to their house, Justice Raja Muhammad Sabir yesterday appointed a bailiff to raid the Sharifs’ model town residence in Lahore to recover Nusrat Shahbaz and her children Hamza, Salman, Jawaria and Rabia and produce them before the court. The court passed the orders after Advocate-General of Punjab Syed Shabbar Raza Rizvi stated that the court might resort to the appointment of bailiff if the petitioners insisted that Shahbaz’s family members were illegally detained in their house. Police teams, meanwhile, conducted raids to trace the wife and daughters of Shahbaz who have been ordered by the government to leave Pakistan and join their exiled family in Jeddah. “The police used massive force in the post-midnight raid. They searched every nook and corner of our house and harassed our ladies,” Salman Shahbaz, the younger son of Mr Shahbaz Sharif, was quoted as saying by The Dawn. The whereabouts of the three are not known after the authorities tried to forcibly deport them last week. The Police also briefly held Sahbaz’s son Hamza and his relatives to pressurise them to hand over the three. However, reports from Lahore said police lifted the siege after they agreed to leave voluntarily. The court has also taken up for hearing another petition against attempts to deport Shahbaz’s family to Saudi Arabia. Denying any involvement of the Punjab Government in the alleged action, Mr Rizvi said his government had nothing to with the detention of the three. He blamed the Shahbaz family for “politicising” the issue and said it was an “open secret” that former premier Sharif and his brother Shahbaz went to Saudi Arabia on an “understanding”. In his petition, Mr Sharif’s lawyer termed the government action as the worst kind of “oppression and tyranny”, adding that a shameful treatment was being meted out to the women of Mr Sharif’s family.
— PTI |
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US court frees LeT accomplice Washington, July 1 US Magistrate Judge T. Rawles Jones of the district court of Alexandria freed Masoud Ahmad Khan at a bail hearing yesterday, three days after the Justice Department announced indictments against Khan and 10 other Washington area Muslims, charging them with training to work with terrorists to fight for Muslim causes abroad. The FBI described Khan as a naturalised American but did not disclose the country of his birth. He is said to have downloaded the pictures of FBI headquarters from the internet. The government called the group “a violent Virginia jehad network” and wanted Khan and others held as “a menace to the community.” (Of the 11, three are said to be in Saudi Arabia). Judge Jones said he took into account Khan’s lack of criminal record and “substantial ties to the community” in addition to “the nature of the offences charged.” However, Jones ordered that Khan, who lives in a Maryland suburb, be electronically monitored. It was, however, unclear whether Khan would be released to his mother’s custody before the government’s appeal against his release was heard, the Washington Post reported.
— PTI |
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Post-Sept 11, USA still unprepared for
terror attack New York, July 1 The study, released on Sunday, found that police, fire, emergency medical services, public hospitals and health agencies, as well as federal law enforcement agencies need another $ 98.4 billion in funding to prepare for a possible attack. “If tomorrow a major weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) attack were to take place in a major American city, we are not prepared to deal with it,” former senator Warren
Rudman, who led the research, told NBC’s “Meet-the-Press” programme. The study, sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, was conducted by a team of military leaders, former top government officials, Nobel laureates, and other experts who examined federal, state and local programmes.
— AFP |
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UN N-body chief to visit Teheran
Teheran, July 1 A spokesman for the Iran's atomic energy organisation, Seyed Khalil Musavi, said the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would hold talks here on July 9 on "greater cooperation between Iran and the IAEA". The official added that members of ElBaradei's delegation could also conduct some visits to Iranian facilities involved in the Islamic republic's building of a nuclear power plant with the Russian aid in the southern city of Bushehr. In Vienna, IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky confirmed the timing of the visit. Mr ElBaradei visited Iran in February, and followed up with a report in June that it had not fully respected the nuclear non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) by failing to inform the IAEA of some of its nuclear activities, including the import of uranium in 1991.
— AFP |
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Blair defeated in fox hunting vote
London, July 1 Blair’s Labour government had intended for lawmakers to vote on proposals to ban stag hunting and hare coursing while allowing fox hunting under licence. However, following a stormy five-hour debate in the Lower House of Commons late yesterday, the government withdrew its proposals at the eleventh hour, allowing lawmakers the opportunity to vote on an outright ban to fox hunting — an issue that has pitted animal rights activists against countryside dwellers who see their way of life under threat. Lawmakers backed the ban by 362 to 154 votes, a majority of 208. Despite the victory, the Upper House of Lords — a bastion of the pro-hunt lobby — is expected to vote against an outright ban, as it did in an earlier vote in 2001. Blair’s Labour party entered government in 1997 with a pledge to ban fox hunting. But following the House of Lords’ opposition, it unveiled compromise proposals last December calling for fox hunts to be permitted as long as participants could get a three-year licence on grounds that foxes have become so plentiful as to become pests in their areas. The issue came to a boil last September when more than 4,00,000 hunt supporters bore down on London for an unprecedented “Liberty and Livelihood” march. Hunting foxes and stags with packs of barking hounds, with riders in scarlet jackets following on horseback, goes back more than 300 years in Britain, and is widely associated with British aristocracy.
— AFP |
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Suu Kyi shifted from Insein jail Yangon, July 1 The secret shifting of Asia’s most famous political prisoner took place on Saturday amid worldwide outrage over the harsh and filthy conditions she was reported to have endured at Insein Jail for the past month. The location of her new place of confinement was believed to be on the Yangon-Bago road, but further details of the place were unknown.
— DPA |
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Pak restricts sale of cigarettes Islamabad, July 1 The new law took effect yesterday, said Dr Atta Mohammed Panwar, an adviser to the federal Health Ministry. The law carries a Rs 1,000 (US$17) fine for first-time offenders to a maximum of Rs 100,000 (US$1,700), and prison terms of up to three years. Those under 18 can no longer buy cigarettes or even be within 50 metres of a store that sells these, Panwar said.
— AP |
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