London, December 4
A British teacher jailed for letting her students name a teddybear Muhammad as part of a writing project arrived home today after being pardoned, ending a case that set-off an international outcry and angered many moderate Muslims.

Gillian Gibbons’ flight arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport shortly after 12.30 pm.

Gibbons, 54, jailed for more than a week, was freed yesterday, after two Muslim members of Britain’s House of Lords met with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and the teacher sent the President a statement saying she did not mean to offend anyone.

“I have a great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone,” Gibbons said in the statement, which was released by al-Bashir’s office and read to journalists by British Baroness Sayeeda Warsi.

Gibbons left Sudan last night, flying via Dubai to London.

She slept for much of the journey, telling reporters “I just want to relax, I don’t want to say any more. I’m too tired.” Al-Bashir insisted Gibbons had a fair trial, in which she was convicted of insulting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad and sentenced to 15 days in prison, but the President agreed to pardon her during the meeting with the British delegation, said Ghazi Saladdin, a senior presidential adviser. — AP

Islamabad, December 4
A burqa-clad suicide bomber, believed to be an Afghan national, blew herself up at an army check post near a convent school in the troubled northwest Pakistan, in the country’s first known case of involvement of a woman in such an attack.

The woman bomber, who was wearing a blue burqa, was killed but there were no other casualties in the attack, which took place on the outskirts of Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), reports reaching here said.

No group claimed responsibility for the incident -which was the first known case of a woman carrying out a suicide attack in Pakistan.

The bomber, who was in her 30s, was trying to reach an unmanned check post outside an intelligence agency office in the area and detonated the explosives when some security personnel spotted her, police officer Tanveer-ul-Hasan Sepra said.

The explosion occurred near St Mary’s Convent, one of the best schools in Peshawar. It also took place in the highly sensitive cantonment area of the NWFP capital, where several offices of the army and intelligence agencies are located. — PTI

Lahore, December 4
Shahbaz Sharif, brother of former Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif, is facing possible arrest over his alleged involvement in the murder of five students here in 1998, when he was the chief minister of the Punjab province, days after his nomination papers for the January 8 general election were rejected.

An anti-terrorism court, which is hearing the case of the killing of the students, suspected criminals, in a fake gun battle with the police allegedly on the instructions from Shahbaz, had earlier ordered his arrest.

The court yesterday issued notices to the Lahore’s police chief and another officer for not arresting Shahbaz.

The notices were issued in response to a contempt application that said the two officers were not obeying the order to arrest Shahbaz, who was declared a proclaimed offender in the case.

The complainant’s counsel, Aftab Bajwa, said the court had thrice issued orders to arrest Shahbaz and produce him before it. He alleged that the police officers had committed contempt of court by not obeying the orders.

Shahbaz informed the court through his lawyer that he could not appear before the judge because he was in exile and was not allowed to return to Pakistan by the government.

A case was registered against Shahbaz in January 2001 by the father of one of the five students killed in the Sabza Zar area of Lahore. — PTI

Kuala Lumpur, December 4
Twenty-six ethnic Indians had been charged with attempted murder in connection with an anti-discrimination rally in Malaysia last month, a lawyer said today.

The defendants pleaded innocent to charges of attempting to kill a police officer during a clash at a temple compound outside Kuala Lumpur on November 25, said M. Manoharan Malayalam, a lawyer.

The rally was the largest protest in at least a decade involving Indians, the country’s second-largest minority population after ethnic Chinese. They had demanded equality and fair treatment in Muslim-majority Malaysia.

Manoharan said, “This is a clear victimisation of the Indians by bringing forth a malicious prosecution that is race-based.” Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail said policeman received stitches on his head after being attacked. “This has nothing to do with race. We follow the law. It applies to everyone under the sun.”

Manoharan said the 26 Indians were earlier arrested during the rally and about half of them had already been charged for illegal assembly. They were released on bail, but police rearrested them at their homes before dawn today in a raid. They face up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

Indians said they suffer discrimination because of an affirmative action policy that favours the majority Malay Muslims in jobs, education, business and government contracts. — AP

Toronto, December 4
The Air India bombers could have been brought to justice years ago if Canada’s spy agency hadn’t erased the key wiretap tapes, a top police officer said.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) deputy commissioner Gary Bass yesterday testified before a public inquiry into the June 23, 1985, attack that the missing material could have been used to build a “conspiracy case” against the Sikh extremists suspected in the blast that killed 329 persons.

“I certainly would have been urging a prosecution,” he said.

“I think there probably would have been an opportunity for a court to accept the wiretap material as a proof of a conspiracy. I can’t say for sure, obviously. But to me it would be fairly compelling evidence to put forward to the Crown (government) counsel.”

At issue are hundreds of hours of wiretaps conducted by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in the months just before and after the bombing of the Kanishka plane. Though written summaries of the contents were kept, the originals were erased keeping with the standard service policy.

A 1992 study by the Security Intelligence Review Committee, the watchdog that monitors CSIS, was critical of the erasures but concluded that it was unlikely that any critical evidence was lost. — PTI

Baghdad, December 4
Iraq’s cabinet agreed to seek a final one-year extension of the UN Security Council mandate covering US-led foreign troops in the country, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said today.

The UN mandate allows coalition forces to conduct a wide range of military operations in Iraq. The current one-year mandate expires at the end of 2007 and Iraqi officials have said they would only seek an extension for one more year.

“The cabinet has just agreed on extending the UN mandate covering multi-national forces in Iraq. This will be the final extension,” Dabbagh said.

When the UN mandate ends, bilateral agreements would govern US-Iraqi relations, officials had said.

The White House said the two sides would start formal negotiations early next year about the future relationship of the two countries, including the size and role of American forces to remain in Iraq. The talks aim to conclude in July. — Reuters

The USA and some European governments have accused President Vladimir Putin of failing to hold free and fair parliamentary elections after his united times as many votes as the Communists, who finished in second place.

Criticism from inside and outside the country grew as more evidence came to light of electoral violations in the poll on Sunday. The Communist Party said it would challenge the vote in court, as it became clear that skewed media coverage and pressure on citizens to vote for United Russia was supplemented by an array of violations on voting day itself.

The Foreign Office released a statement expressing concern over “allegations of electoral malpractice which, if proven correct, would suggest that the Russian elections were neither free nor fair”. The German Foreign Ministry spokesman said: “Russia was not a democracy and Russia is not a democracy. The elections were not free, not fair and not democratic.”

The Bush administration also called for an inquiry into irregularities.

The number of European observers was limited after the election-monitoring arm of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) declined to send a team, citing a lack of co-operation from the Russians. A joint statement from the European observers who did attend said that the vote “was not fair and failed to meet many OSCE and Council of Europe commitments and standards for democratic elections”. A Russian electoral official dismissed the statement and said it was “dictated from abroad”.

Speaking after Putin described the election victory as “legitimate”, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected Western criticism of the head of state’s leading role in the electoral campaign but said that specific complaints would be investigated. “We would disagree with statements that Russia is undemocratic and the election was undemocratic,” he said.

The new Duma was elected solely on the basis of party lists, meaning that even the few isolated critical voices from the last sitting have been squeezed out, and the only party likely to criticise the Kremlin, of the four that made it past the 7 per cent barrier, was the Communists. There are no pro-Western factions in the new Duma. The Russian organisation Golos, which conducted independent monitoring of the vote, reported violations in almost all the regions it was working in.

Liliya Shibanova, the organisation’s executive director, said there were “mass violations” across the country. “Of course, they almost all favoured United Russia,” she said. “They were on a scale that puts the outcome in doubt.” In Chechnya, the pro-United Russia vote attained Soviet-era standards with 99 per cent voting for Putin’s party.

The election was widely seen as a referendum on Mr Putin’s administration and the results are certain to rekindle speculation about his future, as the president is constitutionally barred from serving a third term in office. Peskov confirmed that with 315 seats in parliament, and 64 per cent of the vote, United Russia would have the necessary majority in parliament to amend the constitution. But he told The Independent that he “wouldn’t expect” that the basic law would be amended so that the president could serve another consecutive term.

Putin would have a “very, very important voice” in choosing the presidential candidate of United Russia at a party congress on 17 December, Peskov added. “It is now clear to me that Russians will never allow their country to develop along the destructive path seen in some other countries of the former Soviet Union,” said Putin, apparently referring to Ukraine and Georgia, where pro-Western revolutions have led to political instability. — The Independent