W O R L D

Mumbai Attacks
Rana not to plead guilty
Chicago, March 30
Pakistani-Canadian terror suspect Tahawwur Hussain Rana, charged with involvement in the Mumbai attacks, will stick to his “not guilty plea” unlike co-accused David Coleman Headley, who confessed to plotting the 26/11 strikes.

15 militant groups active in Bangladesh: Report
Dhaka, March 30
Pakistan-based militant groups like LeT, Harkat-ul Mujahideen, JeM and HuJI are among 15 foreign terror groups which were active or are still operating in Bangladesh since 1991 using the country as a safe shelter or transit to infiltrate India.

Palestinian protesters take cover during clashes with Israeli troops after a protest marking Land Day near the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip on Tuesday. — Reuters

Pak High Commissioner in New Delhi gets extension
Islamabad, March 30
Pakistan’s High Commissioner in New Delhi has been given one-year extension, it was announced here. Malik who retired from the Foreign Service in 2008, was rehired on contract for two years which has been extended to one year more.

Mumbai Attacks
Rana not to plead guilty

Chicago, March 30
Pakistani-Canadian terror suspect Tahawwur Hussain Rana, charged with involvement in the Mumbai attacks, will stick to his “not guilty plea” unlike co-accused David Coleman Headley, who confessed to plotting the 26/11 strikes.

Rana (49) appeared before US Judge Harry Leinenweber in a district court today where federal prosecutors set out dates till September to produce and handle classified information and evidence in the case.

Speaking to reporters after the 20-minute hearing, Rana's attorney Patrick Blegen said his client was not changing his plea like co-accused David Coleman Headley did.

“We are heading for a trial... we are hoping for a trial sooner rather than later,” Blegen said.

Rana had on January 25 entered a plea of not guilty to the three counts of charges against him in the superseding indictment returned on January 14 in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

LeT operative and Rana's childhood friend Headley pleaded guilty on March 18 to all 12 counts against him, including scouting for targets for the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

Rana's trial process is expected to start only after September, till when federal prosecutors would work on what evidence, gathered against him, can be used at trial.

Blegen said Headley's guilty plea did not come as a surprise since he had been cooperating with the investigation”.

“As to how it will affect the (Rana) case, I have to see the evidence first,” he said, adding that he feels he still has a strong case.

On whether Indian authorities, who have been pressing to interrogate Headley, would be given access to Rana, Blegen said: “I will wait to hear who exactly wanted to talk to whom and what the conditions are. If they ask, I'll think about it".

Chicago's top federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who was present at the hearing, told the court he hopes to declassify evidence gathered in the terror investigation in the next few months.

Fitzgerald said declassifying the material would help the government avoid extensive use of the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) - which is essentially a procedural tool for a court to address the relevance of classified evidence before it may be introduced for trial.

“A substantial amount of discovery is classified material we're seeking to declassify," said Fitzgerald, whose presence during the hearings demonstrates the high importance the government is attaching to the case.

“If there is something in the documents that we think is necessary for part of the defence we can attempt to get it declassified. If the government does not agree to this, then the court would decide whether the information should be declassified,” Leinenweber said.

“The charges that are brought out against Rana are the ones that are in the indictment. The classified information may relate to completely different people or may be tangiently related to the case," he said. — PTI 

15 militant groups active in Bangladesh: Report

Russians observe a day of mourning

Moscow, March 30
As police scrambled hard for clues to unearth identities of the two woman suicide bombers who targeted the Moscow metro, Russians today marked the Day of Mourning for the 39 persons killed in the terror attacks, lighting candles and paying floral tributes to the victims.

Russian security officials hinted that the attacks could have been plotted by militant groups linked to the Muslim-dominated North Caucasus region, commonly referred to as Chechnya, media reports said.

Security sources were quoted as saying that the two women boarded a metro train together at the Yugo-Zapadnaya station. Interfax reported that they were accompanied to the station by another two women and a man who were photographed by CCTV.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the twin bombings rose to 39, with the death of a woman in hospital.

As the country observed the 'Day of Mourning' in the memory of the victims of the blasts, commuters broke their journeys at Lubyanka and Park Kultury metro stations to place flowers at the makeshift boards, marking the area on platforms where most of the people died yesterday in the globally condemned attacks.

A day after the blasts, there were unusually fewer commuters in the metro during the morning rush hours, with trains running half-empty.

Many persons, who were unable to overcome their metro phobia, came by surface transport to pay tributes to the fellow travellers who died in the blasts. They lit candles and placed flowers at the sites. — PTI 

Pak High Commissioner in New Delhi gets extension
Tribune News Service

Islamabad, March 30
Pakistan’s High Commissioner in New Delhi has been given one-year extension, it was announced here. Malik who retired from the Foreign Service in 2008, was rehired on contract for two years which has been extended to one year more.

Sources said contract tenure of several other political appointees in major capitals after the PPP came into power in 2008 is also being extended. They include Hussain Haqqani (Washington) and Wajid Shamsul Hasan (London). 

BRIEFLY

An Illegal Iranian immigrant girl looks through the bars at an immigration detention house at Pasuruan in Indonesia's East Java province on Tuesday. The police arrested 47 Iranian immigrants in Pacitan waters on Monday after they tried to sail to Australia. — Reuters

'Door to the afterlife'
LONDON: Egyptian archaeologists claim to have unearthed a 3,500-year-old door to afterlife, belonging to the tomb of a high-ranking Pharaonic official near Karnak temple in Luxor. According to Egypt's Ministry of Culture, the red granite door was built to provide a passage for the spirit to the afterlife. It belonged to the tomb of User, a high-ranking of 15th century BC powerful Queen Hatshepsut. — PTI

Naked run: 4 Oz cops fined
MELBOURNE: Four police officers have been fined after one of them ran naked while returning from a bachelor party, a media report said. The off-duty police officers, who were returning from the party, stripped off in their mini-van and at least one of them did a naked lap of the van at an intersection in Australia's Brisbane city in full view of passing motorists, Herald Sun reported. — IANS