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BBC correspondent Johnston released
Brown cracks down on foreign medics
Evidence suggests plot hatched in UK
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Corruption Crackdown
Suicide attack on army convoy, 6 killed
Old regime will flee, usher in new age: Koirala
EU envoys to boycott Nepal King's birthday party
Cellphone battery blast kills man
Japan gets first woman defence minister
Kanishka convict denied parole in Canada
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BBC correspondent Johnston released
Jerusalem, July 4 The BBC reporter was handed over to officials of the Hamas administration in the early hours today. Describing his abduction as an "appalling experience", Johnston, 45, said it was "fantastic" to be free. "He was freed following an agreement with his kidnappers and he is in good health," a Hamas statement said. Johnston, an award-winning journalist, was the only Western reporter still based permanently in the Gaza Strip when he was snatched at gunpoint on March 12. The Army of Islam, the extremist group which claimed to have kidnapped the reporter, had threatened to kill him if any rescue attempt is made. On June 24, Johnston appeared in a video, saying he was wearing a bomb-belt that his captors would detonate if there was any such attempt. The kidnappers had demanded the release of prisoners held in Britain and Jordan, have accused Hamas of exerting undue pressure for Johnston's release in spiralling tensions between the two groups. Appearing outside the house of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, Johnston said he had been unable to see the sun for three months, and was once chained for 24 hours. "I literally dreamt many times of being free and always woke up back in that room," he said. Johnston said he was not tortured during captivity but he did fall ill from the food he was served. A senior Hamas official, Mahmoud Zahar, said Hamas did not work towards the release "to receive favours from the British government". "We did this because of humanitarian concern, and to achieve a government aim to extend security to all without fear." Hamas fighters yesterday fought gun-battles with Army of Islam militants in the Gaza suburb where Johnston was believed held, Hamas and witnesses said.
— PTI
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Brown cracks down on foreign medics
London, July 4 A government security official said several of the men had been on a British intelligence watch list. One of the suspects on the list had posted a comment on an Internet chat room condemning cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published last year in Danish newspapers, The Evening Standard reported, citing unidentified intelligence sources. A senior US counter-terrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said none of the eight suspects was on any American lists of potential terror suspects. It was unclear why the other suspects might have been put on the British list. One suspect, Iraqi doctor Bilal
Abdulla, reportedly had links to radical Islamic groups, and several others were linked to extremist radicals listed on the database of MI5, the domestic intelligence agency, The Times of London reported. The suspects were arrested in a series of raids across Britain after two car bombs failed to explode in London on Friday and two men tried to drive a vehicle loaded with gas cylinders into the main terminal at Glasgow's airport on Saturday. "Some, but not all, have turned up in a check of the databases, but they are not linked to any previous incident," the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the material. The official said Britain's security services are currently watching around 1,600 people and have details logged of hundreds more. Shiraz Maher, a former member of a radical Islamic group, said he knew Abdulla at Cambridge University. "He was certainly very angry about what was happening in Iraq. ... He supported the insurgency in Iraq. He actively cheered the deaths of British and American troops in Iraq," he told BBC television's
"Newsnight." He said Abdulla berated a Muslim roommate for not being devout enough, showing him a beheading video and warning this could happen to him. He also said he had a number of videos of
al-Qaeda's former leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by a US air strike last year.
Abdulla had been disciplined at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, outside Glasgow, for spending too much time on the Internet, according to the Evening Standard. Meanwhile, a senior British cleric working in Baghdad said on Wednesday that he met with a suspected
al-Qaeda leader in Jordan in April who warned of several British attacks and issued a cryptic warning. "It was so awful that, in my update for the day, I wrote that I have met with the devil today," White told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "At one moment in the meeting he said, 'Those who cure you are going to kill you.'" White — who runs Baghdad's only Anglican parish and has been involved in several hostage negotiations in Iraq — said he did not understand the threat's significance at the time. Although he said he passed the general threat warning on to Britain's Foreign Office, White said he did not mention the comment, who could be interpreted as hinting at the involvement of doctors. All eight of the suspects arrested following the car bombing attempts in London and Glasgow were employed or previously employed by Britain's National Health Service. The suspects, whose names have not been confirmed by police, include two doctors from India, and one doctor apiece from Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. The Jordanian doctor's wife — also arrested — is a medical assistant. Another doctor and a medical student are thought to be from the Mid-east. Some of the suspects worked as colleagues at hospitals in England and Scotland. Officials say the evidence points to the plot being hatched after they met in Britain, rather than overseas. "We'll expand the background checks that have been done where there are highly skilled migrant workers coming into this country," Brown told the House of Commons in his first appearance at the weekly prime minister's questions. "As a result of what has happened in the National Health Service, I have asked Lord West, the new terrorism minister, to conduct an immediate review as to what arrangements we must make in relation to recruitment," Brown said. Investigators believe the main plotters have been rounded up, though others involved on the periphery, including at least one British-born suspect, were still being hunted, the British security official said. The family of one suspect — Mohammad
Haneef, a 27-year-old doctor from India arrested Monday in Brisbane, Australia — professed his innocence. He had worked at Liverpool before. "He has been detained unnecessarily. He is innocent,"
Qurat-ul-ain, Haneef's mother, told The Associated Press in Bangalore.
Sumaiya, Haneef's sister, said on Wednesday he was coming to Bangalore to see his daughter, who was born a week ago. Sumaiya uses one name. Haneef worked in 2005 at Halton Hospital near Liverpool in northern England, hospital spokesman Mark Shone said.
— PTI
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Evidence suggests plot hatched in UK
London, July 4 The eight suspects held yesterday in the failed car-bombing plot include one doctor from Iraq and two from India. There is a doctor from Lebanon and a Jordanian doctor and his medical assistant wife. Another doctor and a medical student are thought to be from West Asia. All employees of Britain’s National Health Service, some worked together as colleagues at hospitals in England and Scotland, and experts and officials say the evidence points to the plot being hatched after they met each other in the UK, rather than overseas. “To think that these guys were a sleeper cell and somehow were able to plan this operation from the different places they were, and then orchestrate being hired by the NHS so they could get to the UK, then get jobs in the same area— I think that’s a planning impossibility,” said Bob Ayres, a former US intelligence officer now at London’s international affairs think tank, Chatham House. “A much more likely scenario is they were here together, they discovered that they shared some common ideology, and then they decided to act on this while here in the UK,” he said. No one has been charged in the plot in which two car bombs failed to explode in central London early Friday and in which two men rammed a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas cylinders into the entrance of Glasgow International Airport and set it on fire Saturday. Investigators believe the same men who parked the explosives-laden cars in London may have also driven the blazing SUV in Glasgow, the British security official said. Investigators believe the main plotters have been rounded up, including one in custody in Australia, though others involved on the periphery, including at least one British-born suspect, were still being hunted, a British government security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the details. The official said some of the detained suspects had turned up in searches of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5’s databases, indicating their identities previously had been logged by agents. “Some, but not all, have turned up in a check of the databases, but they are not linked to any previous incident,” the official said. The official said Britain’s security services are currently watching around 1,600 people and have details logged of hundreds more. British-born Muslims behind the bloody 2005 London transit bombings and others in thwarted plots here have been linked to terror training camps in Pakistan, and the official said Pakistan, India and several other nations were asked to check possible links with the suspects in the latest attacks. The high education of the alleged participants in the car bomb attempts is in sharp contrast to the July 7 attacks two years ago. In the current case, Muhammad
Haneef, a 27-year-old doctor from India arrested late Monday in Brisbane, Australia, worked in 2005 at Halton Hospital near Liverpool in northern England, hospital spokesman Mark Shone said. Another Indian doctor, 26, arrested late Saturday in Liverpool, worked at the same hospital, Shone confirmed, but refused to divulge his name.
— AP
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Corruption Crackdown
Dhaka, July 4 The court also jailed his son, Mir Mohammad Helaluddin, a lawyer, for three years for helping his father amass wealth worth 280 million taka ( US $ 4 million) for which they could not produce any legal source. The court also fined Nasiruddin 5 million taka and Helaluddin
100,000 taka. The court also ordered confiscation of their ill-gotten wealth, court
officials said. ''The judge Amar Kumar Nath announced the punishment as complaints against them were proved undoubtedly,'' a court registrar said. Defence lawyers said they would appeal the verdict. Nasiruddin and his son were arrested in early March and the reconstituted Anti-Corruption Commission filed the corruption charges against them in the special court. More than 170 key political figures including Khaleda's elder son and political heir Tareque Rahman have been detained in the anti-corruption crackdown aimed at cleaning up politics before elections, which are expected late next year. Among those detained, eight people including two former ministers of Khaleda's cabinet and one of her political secretaries have so far been given jail
terms. — Reuters
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Suicide attack on army convoy, 6 killed
Islamabad, July 4 Defence spokesman Major-General Waheed Arshad told newsmen here that a suicide bomber attacked the army convoy going from Mir Ali in North Waziristan to Bannu, a major city near the tribal region. Four army personnel were killed on the spot while two seriously injured later died in a hospital. Four other soldiers were also injured in the attack, he said. The spokesman said no group claimed responsibility for the attack but "We are investigating as to who carried it out." He, however, did not rule out the possibility of any links to the government crackdown on the Lal Masjid clerics and their militant students. Minister for state for information Tariq Azim told the media here that the Lal Masjid clerics, Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi, had been in contact with some militant leaders in the tribal areas to carry out attacks to protest the crackdown on their mosque and madrasas in Islamabad. He said their monitored phone calls revealed that they wanted such attacks to take place. Most of the 7,000 students studying in the two madrasas belong to poor families and hail from remote areas of North West Frontier Province.
— PTI
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Old regime will flee, usher in new age: Koirala
Nepal’s Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala said today the forthcoming November 22 Constituent Assembly (CA) elections would bring new revolution with new destiny in Nepal by destroying all the ruins of the regressive forces.
Presenting the government’s plan and policy for the new fiscal year at the setting of the interim parliament this afternoon, Koirala proclaimed that it would usher in a “new age” for Nepal through economic and social transformation after holding elections in a successful manner. Remembering the famous statement of Mahatma Gandhi: “Those, with whom we struggle, may flee the country after the revolution”, Koirala related the fate of monarchy with the fate of the then British ruler and said, “The fossils of the old regime will help us by their feet -- fleeing the country”. In its annual policy and plan, the government has given the top priority to the upcoming CA election and asked all the people to contribute to make it a success in a free and fair manner. Similarly, the government has also expressed commitment towards national restructuring, provision of relief to the victims of conflict, nationalisation of late King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya’s properties and the setting up of a trust to nationalise parks taken up King Gyanendra in his capacity as the head of the state. This is the second time after the April 2006 people’s uprising, Koirala presented the government’s annual plan and policy in the interim parliament and the first time since the former Maoist rebels joined the interim parliament and eight-party coalition interim government. Earlier, the King used to present such a plan and policy in the parliament as the head of the state.
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EU envoys to boycott Nepal King's birthday party
At a time when Nepal's King Gyanendra has been deciding to host a reception on the occasion of his 60th birthday on July 8 at the five-star Soaltee Hotel, various ambassadors to Nepal from European countries decided not to attend the function.
British ambassador to Nepal Dr Andrew Hall on Wednesday said, "Yes, we are invited from the palace but ambassadors of EU nations in Nepal have decided not to attend the King's birthday ceremony on July 8." Amidst speculations that dignitaries were invited to the luncheon of King Gyanendra's birthday, Dr Hall made it clear that none of the EU envoys would be attending the function. Speaking at a press meet this afternoon on behalf of European Union's President in Nepal, British envoy Dr Hall said it was not a right time to join such royal functions. Meanwhile, King Gyanendra has formed a 1,085-member main
celebration organising committee with saint Prapannacharya as its convener. According to a source, the committee has managed arrangement for over 2,000 participants at the Soaltee Hotel. Hall also urged the government and major political parties to create a conducive atmosphere to hold November 22 Constituent Assembly election in free and fair manner. He also informed that EU would send election monitors during the Constituent Assembly polls and continue its support for the peace process here.
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Cellphone battery blast kills man
Beijing, July 4 The cell phone, a genuine Motorola, in his chest pocket suddenly exploded and Xiao, 22, died at a local hospital after emergency treatment failed, commissar with the public security bureau of Jinta County, Bai Shixiong said. The initial investigation showed the phone battery exploded after being exposed to a high temperature, breaking Xiao's ribs and penetrating into his heart, Xinhua news agency quoted police as saying.
— PTI
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Japan gets first woman defence minister
Tokyo, July 4 Koike succeeded Fumio Kyuma, who resigned yesterday following his controversial remarks on the US atomic bombings of Japan in World War II. Koike, 54, a special security adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, became the first woman to assume the top defence post in the Cabinet. Abe appointed her after accepting Kyuma's resignation in a swift move apparently aimed at limiting any adverse impact on the July 29 House of Councillors election. — Kyodo
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Kanishka convict denied parole in Canada Vancouver, July 4 According to the board's decision on Tuesday, Inderjit Singh Reyat must remain in a British Columbia prison until his sentence is completed in February 2008. Reyat was eligible for parole last year, but the board rejected his application, saying he tried to downplay his role in the airliner bombing that killed 329 people. In 2003, Reyat was sentenced to five years imprisonment for manslaughter after he admitted to buying bomb-making materials used to explode the plane off the coast of Ireland, The Globe and Mail reported. During the trial, two other Indo-Canadian Sikhs, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, were acquitted of murder and conspiracy charges. Air India Flight 182 exploded while at an altitude of 31,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, killing 329 passengers on board, of whom 82 were children. Until September 11, 2001, the Kanishka bombing was the single deadliest terrorist attack involving aircraft. — IANS
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