In his first ever interview to a newsman since the eruption of the judicial crisis over his suspension on March 9, Pakistan's suspended Chief Justice, Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, has said he is "entirely innocent" and, therefore, called for an open trial by the Supreme Judicial Council.

Iftikhar told Dawn that there is nothing wrong in his decision to accept the invitation of the legal fraternity to address them in the coming days. "Taking bar associations into confidence about (the) prevailing constitutional issues is the duty of every chief justice," he said.

Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry looked confident enough to deal with any adversity. "I am proud that each member of my family has stood by me in this difficult and trying time. They have given me strength. I believe that Allah the Almighty will vindicate me," said Iftikhar Chaudhry.

He was quite clear about the way things have shaped up during the last couple of weeks and the support he was getting from the legal fraternity, particularly in the form of resignations by a number of judges. He called upon the Supreme Judicial Council to grant him a "public trial" so that the council's own image does not suffer.

"This should not cause any embarrassment to anyone, and certainly not to me. I want all the citizens of Pakistan to know that their Chief Justice is not at fault," said Iftikhar.

Acknowledging the decision of those judges who had resigned in his support, Chaudhry unequivocally praised them by stating that he had "great respect for those judges of the High and subordinate courts who have sacrificed their jobs for the cause of the rule of law".

Besides emphasising his desire to let the people judge him, Iftikhar Chaudhry also talked at length about the various cases he had taken up during the course of his curtailed tenure as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Despite this record, the Chief Justice refused to talk about the reference against him or of any individual allegation. He also did not want to speak about the future plans or of the defence that he intended to offer before the Supreme Judicial Council. The panel, said the Chief Justice, was drawn from all the provinces of Pakistan and comprised senior lawyers who held representative positions in the Pakistan Bar Council and the Supreme Court Bar Association.

The chief justice declined to talk about his meeting with the president and the circumstances in which he visited camp office of the president on March 9. He said that these matters would be taken up in the course of the proceedings of the reference before the Supreme Judicial Council and would agitate them at that forum.

The Supreme Judicial Council, headed by Justice Rana Bhagwandas who is expected to take oath as acting Chief Justice at the weekend, having returned from his vacation in India, is slated to meet on April 3.

Cambridge, March 23
Bill Gates is finally getting his Harvard degree - 32 years after he dropped out of the university on his path to become the world’s wealthiest person.

Gates, a co-founder of Microsoft Corp, will receive an honorary degree in June when he delivers the university’s 356th commencement address.

Gates is considered as a member of Harvard’s class of 1977, which celebrates its 30th reunion this year. He first came to the university in 1973, but left in 1975 to devote his time to develop Microsoft, which he founded that year with his childhood friend Paul Allen.

Gates helped turn ‘Redmond’into the world’s largest maker of computer software, with annual revenues in excess of $ 44 billion during 2006. He was the company’s chief executive until 2000 and still serves as a chairman. — AP

Vadodara, March 23
A 30-year-old fisherman, who was held in Pakistani jail since his arrest in the sea last year, has died there. This was informed by the External Affairs Ministry which got the information from its counterpart in Pakistan.

Dhirubhai Kubhabhai, who was arrested by the Pakistani marine security agency on November 18, 2006, while he along with other fishermen was fishing in the sea near Jhakua, off the Gujarat coast, died on March 12, officials said.

The cause of the death is yet to be ascertained The family of the dead fisherman, who hails from Kajardi village in Saurashtra, are worried as the body is yet to arrive from Pakistan. — PTI

New York, March 23
A new English-language interpretation of the Koran has challenged the use of words that, the feminists say, have been used to justify the abuse of women.

The new version, translated by an Iranian-American, will be published in April and comes after the gathering of Muslim feminists in New York last November. They had vowed to create the first women council to interpret the Koran and make the religion friendly towards women.

Laleh Bakhtiar, a former lecturer on Islam at the University of Chicago, has challenged the translation of the Arab word ‘idrib’, traditionally translated as ‘beat’, which the feminists say has been used to justify abuse of women.

“Why choose to interpret the word as ‘to beat’ when it can also mean ‘to go away’,” she writes in the introduction to the book. Some Muslims said the new interpretation had strayed from the original. Bakhtiar has defended her work, saying that she has translated from the Arabic text.

A New York imam said the passage she was challenging, spoke of when a woman wanted a divorce, and only allowed a man to hit his wife with a ‘miswak’, or a twig of a pencil’s length, on her hand.

An Arabic language professor at the American University in Cairo Siham Serry said her interpretation of the word ‘idrib’, was ‘to push away’ similar but slightly different from Bakhtiar’s. She agreed with the imam that the Koran did not encourage the harm to women. — Reuters