The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Jail for Osama’s widows, daughters
Afzal Khan in Islamabad

Slain Al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden’s three widows and two daughters were on Monday sentenced to 45 days in prison and fined Rs 10,000 each for illegally entering and living in Pakistan by a court here, which also ordered their deportation after completion of their jail terms.

The sentence will be applicable from the day they were detained which in practice would mean 14 more days, after which they will be deported to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, their counsel Aamir Khalil told reporters.

Khalil said the fine has been paid and interior ministry secretary has been directed to make arrangements for deporting all five persons. The governments of Saudi Arabia and Yemen have already conveyed their willingness to accept Osama’s family members, he added.

The trial of the women was conducted in a house in Islamabad where members of bin Laden’s family are currently being held. Authorities have declared the house a sub-jail.

Besides handing down the sentence of 45 days to bin Laden’s three widows and two daughters, civil judge Shahrukh Arjumand ordered them to pay a fine of Rs 10,000 each, a lawyer defending the women told the media.

The judge further directed authorities to arrange the deportation of the women after they had completed their jail terms.

The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had filed a case against bin Laden’s three widows, two of them Saudi nationals and third a Yemeni, last month under the Foreigners Act and Pakistan Penal Code for illegally entering and living in the country.

Under Pakistani law, the maximum sentence for illegally entering and living in the country is five years.

Laden’s family members were detained by Pakistani security agencies after US Special Forces killed the Al-Qaida chief at a compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad on May 2 last year.

Zakarya Ahmad Abd al Fattah, the Yemeni brother of bin Laden’s youngest and reputedly favourite wife, Amal al Sadeh, was present in the court. “The court has also given direction to the government to arrange the necessary documents for their earliest repatriation, so that they can go to their own country as soon as possible,” Fattah told reporters.

Amal al Sadeh had told Pakistani investigators that the Al-Qaida chief lived in Pakistan since 2002, criss-crossing the country’s northwest before moving to the compound in Abbottabad where he was killed. Laden moved between five safe houses over a period of nine years.

He also fathered four children in Pakistan, including two who were born in a state-run hospital in a town close to Islamabad, Amal al Sadeh told the investigators.

Tensions high on 30th anniversary of Falklands War

Falklands War veteran Cesar Ozan salutes during a ceremony on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the war, in Ushuaia on Sunday. — Reuters

Stanley, April 2
Britain and Argentina today marked 30 years since the invasion of the Falkland Islands triggered a 74-day war, with diplomatic tensions still running high. In a statement to mark the anniversary, British Prime Minister David Cameron described the invasion as a “profound wrong” and reaffirmed his government’s commitment to upholding the right of Falkland islanders to determine their own future.

The brief but bloody war ended in defeat for Argentina, costing the lives of 649 of its troops, after Britain sent a task force to the islands to reclaim the territory which it has ruled since 1833. Britain lost 255 men in the hostilities.

But the human toll has in recent years been overshadowed by fresh Argentine claims of sovereignty and a battle to exploit offshore oil deposits.

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, who has denounced British rule of the islands as an “anachronism”, will unveil a monument and eternal flame to the country’s dead servicemen in the southern city of Ushuaia.

The Falklands with population around 3,000 are located some 400 nautical miles from Argentina, which calls the islands the Malvinas.

The April 2, 1982, invasion ordered by the then-ruling military junta in Argentina caught Britain’s Foreign Office off-guard and initially there was skepticism on whether military action in the far-off territory was worthwhile.

Then British PM Margaret Thatcher, however, resolutely vowed to reclaim the islands and once the war was won she basked in her reputation as “The Iron Lady,” to win re-election in 1983, and again in 1987.

Tensions between London and Buenos Aires have flared anew since 2010, when Britain authorised oil companies to explore in Falklands waters, and Argentina has accused Britain of militarising the seas around the windswept islands, taking its claims to the UN. — AFP

31 killed in Russian plane crash

Moscow, April 2
Thirty-one people were killed today when a Russian passenger plane crashed while trying to make an emergency landing shortly after take-off near the western Siberian city of Tyumen, officials said.

At least 31 out of the 43 people onboard were killed in the accident, the Russian Emergencies Ministry was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency. There were no children on board, it said.

The twin-engine ATR-72 plane heading to Surgut crashed 30 km from the city of Tyumen shortly after takeoff. The aircraft burst into flames and broke into pieces upon impact.

There were 39 passengers and four crew on board. All the crew members were among the dead, but 12 survivors were taken to hospital, all in a serious condition, it said. One person later died in hospital of his injuries.

Russian airline operator UTair said the plane went down as the pilots tried to carry out an emergency landing. While preliminary investigations cite possible causes of the crash as technical difficulties and pilot error, media reports said.

All the bodies were recovered and the plane wreckage is being examined. The “black box” flight recorder had been found and a team of investigators has flown to the scene.

A criminal probe has been launched into the incident.

Deputy Transport Minister Valery Okulov has been appointed head of a government inquiry into the crash.

The plane should have been carrying 40 passengers as one person arrived late for the flight, Tyumen deputy prosecutor Valentin Tarasov was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti.

The crash is Russia’s deadliest air accident since a jet crashed in September last year, killing most of the players from the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team. — PTI

Exhibition on Punjabis in California opens

Washington, April 2
Capturing the story of over 100 years of the small yet influential Punjabi community in the US, a multi-media exhibition celebrating its contribution has opened in a Sikh-dominated Californian city.

The first permanent exhibit of its kind in the United States, “Becoming American: The Story of Pioneer Punjabis and South Asians”, the exhibition opened over the weekend in the Community Memorial Museum of Sutter County in California’s Yuba City.

Known as the prune capital of the world, Yuba City has a sizeable Sikh community.

In fact, the Yuba-Sutter Area has grown to be one of the largest in the US and one of the largest Sikh populations outside Punjab.

The exhibit, developed by the Punjabi American Heritage Society, intends to provide a better understanding of their faith, traditions and experiences.

“It (the museum) documents the hardships they faced on their arrival in California in the early twentieth century and their journey to ‘Becoming American’,” said community leader Jasbir Kang. — PTI

Pak Taliban introduces ‘moral policing’ in Afghanistan

Islamabad, April 2
The Pakistani Taliban have introduced “moral policing” in parts of northeastern Afghanistan in a bid to enforce their puritanical version of Islam, Afghan police officials have said.

Key leaders of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan - including its chieftains Maulana Fazlullah from Swat, Maulvi Faqir of Bajaur Agency and Abdul Wali of Mohmand Agency - and dozens of their fighters fled military operations in Pakistan and sought sanctuary in the Afghan provinces of Nuristan and Kunar.

They mounted sporadic cross-border attacks on Pakistani troops in Chitral and Dir districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Now, they have introduced “moral policing” on the pattern of the Taliban-era “Department for the Preservation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” in Kamdesh district of Nuristan.

Armed vigilantes of the Pakistani Taliban roam the streets to stop what they believe are “un-Islamic” activities.

“Turbaned and bearded Pakistani Taliban fighters, clad in black clothes, punish local people for shaving or trimming beards, using mobile phones and even eating naswar,” Afghan provincial police chief Ghulamullah Nuristani said over phone.

The vigilantes, according to Nuristani, are affiliated with a Pakistani Taliban faction led by Maulana Fazlullah, the infamous cleric who fled his stronghold in the Swat valley following a military operation in 2009. Pakistani Taliban spokesman Sirajuddin and the Afghan Taliban denied the police chief’s claim. — PTI

Hungarian Prez resigns over plagiarism scandal

Budapest, April 2
Hungary’s President Pal Schmitt resigned today after he was stripped last week of his 1992 doctorate title following claims he plagiarised most of his 200-page thesis.

“Under the constitution, the President must represent the unity of the Hungarian nation. I have unfortunately become a symbol of division, I feel it is my duty to leave my position,” he told Parliament.

Schmitt, a close ally of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, leaves the ceremonial post less than two years after he took over the presidency in June 2010.

Rumours he might resign first arose on Friday, a day after Budapest’s Semmelweis University stripped him of his PhD title, but Schmitt clung on, insisting that he could “see no link” between the plagiarism affair and his job.

The university found last week that the President copied “word-for-word” large passages of another writer’s work in his thesis on the history of the Olympic Games.

Orban kept mostly out of the debate, telling public radio Friday that the president alone must make the decision on whether he should resign, while opposition parties had called on him to step down.

In Germany, then defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg was also forced to resign last year over allegations that he too plagiarised his doctoral thesis. — AFP