The Judicial Review Board of the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday extended for another 60 days the house arrest of Hafiz Saeed, head of the banned outfit Jamaat-Ud-Dawa and another JuD leader Col Nazir Ahmed, who were detained after the November 26 Mumbai attacks.

The Board, however, freed Hafiz Saeed’s two other colleagues, Amir Hamza and Mufti Abdul Rehman.

Hafiz Saeed was presented before the review board of the LHC along with his four aides under high security. The JuD was banned after the Mumbai carnage and several of its leaders were detained on accusations by the Indian authorities that they were involved in planning, funding and executing the Mumbai attack.

The Punjab government pleaded the court to extend the house arrests of banned outfit leaders. The larger Bench will resume hearing on May 12.

Colombo, May 5
Sri Lankan troops have "almost wiped out" the 30-year-old "LTTE menace", President Mahinda Rajapaksa asserted even as the military today launched a multi-directional manoeuvre to rescue civilians trapped in a tiny strip of land, where the rebel remnants are hiding.

The war with the LTTE is ending and "final touches" are being given by the security forces in their campaign to eliminate the LTTE terrorism, Rajapaksa said.

"Heroic soldiers have almost wiped out 30-year-old terrorist menace, and we are in the final phase of putting the final touches to the brutal war," the President said at a ceremony to welcome newly sworn-in Western Provincial Council (WPC) Chief Minister and his cabinet here yesterday.

According to the military, the troops are advancing into the remaining parts of the no-fire zone while launching a multi-directional strategy to rescue the civilians, who, they say, are being held hostage by the rebels. — PTI

The Supreme Court has full power of revisiting the vires of the 17th Amendment that validated all acts and regulations promulgated by General Pervez Musharraf as the military ruler, including constitutional amendments to enhance his powers, Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, has observed.

‘We can review all martial law regulations and actions, even those given protection by Article 270AA of the Constitution under the Seventeenth Constitution Amendment,’ said Chief Justice Chaudhry during hearing of a petition by the Capital Development Authority.

Article 270 of the Constitution was adopted in 2003 with the help of the Muttahida Majlise Amal alliance of six religious parties, giving blanket protection to military rulers.

Meanwhile the Supreme Court has launched a Draft National Judicial Policy aimed at ensuring independence of the judiciary, separation of the executive from the judiciary, eliminating corruption and clearing huge backlog of cases within specified time. It bars the Chief Justice or a judge of the superior judiciary to accept executive appointments, including as acting governor of a province. The new policy will ensure disposal of criminal cases within a period of three months while death cases will be decided preferably in a period of six months. 

Los Angeles, May 5
Teen vampire movie “Twilight” led the MTV Movie Award nominations announced yesterday with seven nods, just ahead of Oscar winner “Slumdog Millionaire”, which earned six nominations.

In an online poll, “Twilight” earned nods for best movie, best female performance (Kristen Stewart) and breakthrough performance male (Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner). “Slumdog Millionaire” garnered six nominations, including best movie, breakthrough performance female (Freida Pinto) and breakthrough performance male (Dev Patel).

The awards will take place on May 31 in Los Angeles and fans can vote for their favourites at the MTV Movies Awards site.

Joining “Twilight” and “Slumdog Millionaire” in the best movie category are “The Dark Knight”, ”High School Musical 3” and “Iron Man”. The other actors vying in the breakthrough performance male category are Ben Barnes for “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Prince of Caspian” and Bobb’e J. Thompson for “Role Models”. Other breakthrough performance female selections are Ashley Tisdale and Vanessa Hudgens("HSM 3") and Miley Cyrus ("Hannah Montana: The Movie").

Apart from Stewart the best female performance nominees include Anne Hathaway (“Bride Wars”), Angelina Jolie (“Wanted”) and Kate Winslet (“The Reader”). Zac Efron (“HSM 3”), will compete for best male performance against Shia LaBeouf (“Eagle Eye”) and Robert Downey, Jr (“Tropic Thunder”). — DPA

Just a day after Prime Minister and Unified CPN (Maoist) chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal resigned from the coalition government blaming President Dr Ram Baran Yadav and some national and international power centres to topple his government, the Nepali media on Tuesday revealed Maoists’ real strategy to seize the power and the national army.

In a shocking video revelation, Image Channel, a Kathmandu-based private TV channel, exposed the real bins of Dahal by airing his video cassette recorded on January 2, 2008, while addressing Maoists commanders at Shaktikhor in Chitwan, where Dahal had said the Maoists’ long-term strategy was to control the national army and seize the state power sooner than later.

He also claimed that the Maoists joined the peace process in accordance with the Lenin and Mao’s strategy to establish communism regime rather than to establish democratic system.

At a time when political parties were expressing doubts against the Maoists’ move to sack army chief Rookmangud Katawal as a “premeditated strategy” to capture the state power on the pretext of upholding civilian supremacy, this video has proved their claims.

He said the Maoists had no interest of integration of the former guerrillas into the Nepal army to take the peace process to a logical end.

He said, “Even a small number of combatants entry into the Nepal army is enough to establish total Maoists control over the army. Our soldiers are politically awakened and they will easily dominate.”

He has revealed that the Maoists had planned to oust army chief Rookmangud Katawal, thinking that he could stand against the integration plan.

According to Dahal, the real strength of the former rebels’ combatants (People’s Liberation Army) was around 7,000 to 8,000 and not 35,000 as earlier claimed by the party. The video shows Dahal as saying that after the verification by UNMIN, the total number of Maoists fighters had gone up. He also made it clear through the video that all party leaders were working towards launching a fresh revolt.

According to Prachanda, his party needed money from the persons who had been declared “martyrs” and said out of Rs 1 million, Rs 900,000 should go into the party’s fund that would help them to materialise their goal of fresh revolt.

“You all know that if we have enough money in our hands, we can prepare a good battle plan. So, the party needs a good amount of money for the revolt,” he said while addressing the Maoists commanders.

Meanwhile, Maoist leader Mohan Baidya said this tape was genuine but it was a Maoist strategy two years ago. “Now, the situation has changed and Maoists have adopted a democratic practice. Hence, this video talks are irrelevant,” he said, adding, “It should be investigated why the tape has been made public after such a long time.”