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Monday,
August 11, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Ripudaman
seeks aid to pay legal bills Tamil-American
challenges Patriot Act Hoon may
take blame for Kelly’s death,
‘Shoot
on sight’ orders for UK cops
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NRI joins
California governorship race Silicon Valley, August 10 Indian-American businessman Vikramjit Bajwa and “Terminator” Arnold Schwarzenegger are among more than 450 candidates who have filed their candidacy papers to run for governorship of California.
Blast near Tikrit
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Ripudaman seeks
aid to pay legal bills Vancouver, August 10 Ripudaman Singh Malik, a millionaire businessman, who has received an undisclosed amount from the British Columbia Attorney-General’s Ministry to fund his defence team, is seeking more financial aid. He also told the court that he was prepared to hand over all his assets to the provincial government if it
paid for his legal bills pertaining to the trial. “My assets should go to the province to pay for my defence,” he said during the third day of the testimony at a hearing on a request for the government to pay his lawyers, media reports said. Malik’s legal bills are “hundreds of thousands of dollars a month,” his lawyer Kevin Woodall told the court. At the time of his arrest, Malik and his wife had a net worth of about $ 10 million. He paid his legal bills from the time of his arrest in October, 2000, until February, 2002, with the help of a loan of $ 330,000 from a brother in California and by cashing his registered retirement savings plan worth about $ 200,000. Malik estimated during his testimony that his legal costs are now as high as $ 5 million and could go up to $ 6 million by next year, when the trial is expected to finish, ‘The Globe and Mail’ daily said. The British Columbia Government started providing money for Malik’s defence in February, 2002, on the condition that he would liquidate his assets. However, in September Malik told the government that his financial situation had deteriorated and debtors would claim all his assets if he sold them off.
— PTI |
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Tamil-American challenges Patriot Act Silicon Valley, August 10 The lawsuit, filed in a Los Angeles court on August 5, challenges a section of the law that criminalises the provision of “expert advice and assistance” to proscribed organisations. The Patriot Act is being widely criticised for infringing on civil liberties. “In its rush to pass the Patriot Act just six weeks after the September 11 attacks, Congress overlooked one of our most fundamental rights {the right to express our political beliefs), especially those that are controversial,” says CCR Senior Attorney Nancy Chang. “Now, it is up to the judiciary to correct Congress’ excesses.” The CCR’s motion was filed in a pending lawsuit, humanitarian law project. It challenges a Patriot Act amendment to the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, a law that makes it a crime to provide material support to any group designated by the Secretary of State as a foreign terrorist organisation. The Patriot Act amends the definition of material support to include “expert advice and assistance,” and makes it a crime to provide such advice or assistance no matter what its intent and purpose, and even where it has nothing whatsoever to do with furthering terrorism. In its filing earlier this week, the CCR argues that the ban on “expert advice and assistance” added by the Patriot Act covers essentially the same activities as, and is as unconstitutionally vague as, the ban on “training” and “personnel,” and should also be struck down. It said plaintiff Dr Jeyalangim was a Tamil-American physician who was deeply concerned for the welfare of the Tamils in Sri Lanka as members of his family were forced to flee that country as refugees. He would like to alleviate the shortage of trained physicians in the Tamil Eelam region of northeast Sri Lanka by providing his medical services. However, because some of the hospitals in the region are run by the LTTE, Jeyalangim is afraid to do so because he fears prosecution for providing material support.
— PTI |
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Hoon may take blame for Kelly’s death, says report London, August 10 As a judicial inquiry into Kelly’s death prepares to begin hearing testimonies tomorrow, the Sunday Express said Mr Hoon would resign once the presiding judge Lord Brian Hutton delivers his concluding report into the affair. The Ministry of Defence was responsible for “outing” Kelly as the source of a BBC report that alleged the government beefed up a dossier on Iraq ahead of the US-led war in March. “Mr Hoon will be the fall guy for the whole government,” the Sunday Express quoted a government source as saying. “He is going to be hung out to dry in the hope that his resignation will get (British Prime Minister) Tony Blair off the hook.” The source added: “Nobody believes that Mr Hoon was the one behind the leaking of Kelly’s name, that would never have been done without Downing Street’s say-so, but Mr Hoon is expendable while the Prime Minister isn’t.” Meanwhile, the Defence Ministry’s most senior civil servant is said to have told the BBC that his department had deliberately “outed” Kelly. According to a report in The Sunday Telegraph, the ministry’s Permanent Secretary Sir Kevin Tebbit also allegedly branded Kelly an “eccentric” shortly before he died. Both revelations might be used by the BBC in evidence to the inquiry, the paper said.
— AFP |
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‘Shoot on sight’ orders for UK cops London, August 10 Sir John Stevens, Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has placed his force on high alert following latest intelligence reports from British and American security services that Al-Qaida intends to bomb public buildings in central London, the Sunday Telegraph reported today. The Al-Qaida had twice tried to target the UK this year, but on both occasions the attempts were foiled. In January, the police seized deadly poison ricin from a flat in Wood Green, north London. The following month, a plot to attack Heathrow was uncovered. Armed troops and tanks were sent to guard the airport. Sir Stevens has now given instructions that hundreds of armed officers who patrol the capital must shoot to kill if they believe that someone is trying to detonate explosives carried on his body or in a vehicle, the report said.
— PTI |
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NRI joins California governorship race Silicon Valley, August 10 On October 7, California voters will decide two questions: whether incumbent Governor Gray Davis should be ousted and, if so, who should replace him. A “certified list” of candidates will be released on August 13. In the fray is Mr Bajwa, an Indian-American real estate businessman from Santa Rosa, who like dozens others has paid the $3,500 filing fee and furnished 65 valid signatures to be on the recall ballot. Other aspirants in the motley crowd of candidates include Different Strokes TV star Gary Coleman, California Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, businessman Bill Simon, who lost to Mr Davis last November, porn king Larry Flynt and porn star Mary Carey. Also contending are Georgy Russell, a 26-year-old software engineer with no political experience and William, an 18-year-old with some political experience, having fought and lost all six high-school student elections.
— PTI |
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5 brothers shot in Karachi Karachi, August 10 Three or four assailants, riding on at least two motorcycles, intercepted the vehicle of their victims on the congested Jehangir Road in eastern Karachi, and sprayed bullets on it with Kalashnikov rifles and pistols, they said.
— Reuters |
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Blast near Tikrit Tikrit, August 10
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