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Syrian rebels rock capital Damascus with car bomb
A woman emerges kingmaker in France
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Osama’s shoe-bomber reveals post-9/11 plans Five held in UK anti-terror raid EU wants India to join strikes on pirate bases, Centre yet to take call
Special to the
tribune
Contempt of Court
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Syrian rebels rock capital Damascus with car bomb
Beirut, April 24 The attacks took place as a UN team observing Syria's violence-ridden truce was visiting another area near the capital, the restive suburb of Douma. Activists and amateur videos reported shelling and gunfire in that area today, just a day after 55 persons were killed across Syria most of them in a city the observers had recently visited. Today's attacks underline the increasing militarisation of the 13-month-old conflict and show the effort by Assad's opponents to chip away at the security services he relies upon to quash dissent. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one intelligence officer was killed in the capital's Barzeh neighbourhood but gave no information on how he died. Separately, an army truck blew up as it was driving through downtown Damascus. The blast in Marjah Square near the Iranian Cultural Center left blood and shattered glass on the road. The truck's driver and two passengers in a nearby car were injured and taken to a hospital. Security officials at the scene said the truck driver did not appear to be implicated in the blast, suggesting the explosives had been planted on the vehicle. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media. The Syrian government did not immediately comment on those attacks. The state news service, however, said "terrorists" killed a retired lieutenant colonel and his brother in a Damascus suburb in a third attack. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks.
— AP
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A woman emerges kingmaker in France
Paris, April 24 Incumbent President Nicholas Sarkozy faces an uphill task after being pipped by his main rival Francois Hollande of the Socialist Party, the first time a sitting president has lost in the first round since the start of the Fifth Republic in 1958. After the first round of voting, the French political debate took a sharp turn towards the right, or far right. And for a good reason. The only real surprise of the first round held Sunday was the share of votes captured by the extreme right-wing party, Le Front National. In various opinion polls, held in the run up to the vote, the party, which has been led by Marine Le Pen, daughter of the founder of the party, for the past five years, was often hovering below the key 15 percent mark and at times even falling behind the extreme left candidate Jean Luc Melonchon. However, in the final count, Marine Le Pen led her party to record heights, falling barely short of 18 per cent mark, while Melonchon was way behind with 11.11 per cent of the votes polled. In what could be indeed a shocker for the Socialist Party and the other multiple left front candidates, Le Pen got substantial support from the working class in France. In several bastions of the working class throughout the country, she was ahead of all the other candidates. The performance of Le Pen is key for the second round as the two finalists, President Sarkozy and his challenger Hollande, have already begun the battle for the second round and not surprisingly, the 18% voters of Le Pen hold the key to the eventual victor. These voters would normally fall into the lap of Sarkozy’s party, UMP, but Marine Le Pen has so far not called for her supporters to vote for either Sarkozy or Hollande, saying that she would announce her next step in a rally in Paris on May 1, five days before the second round.
— IANS
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Osama’s shoe-bomber reveals post-9/11 plans New York, April 24 Saajid Badat gave his testimony yesterday through a video link in the ongoing trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn of Adis Medunjanin, a Queens man accused of plotting with two of his schoolmates to blow up New York subways. Badat, 33, was convicted in London for his role in a 2001 plot to bring down an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami with explosives hidden in his shoes. While Badat's testimony was not directly related to the New York subway terror plot, it was used to corroborate facts about the training in Qaida-run camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a report in the New York Times said. Badat said he had traveled to Afghanistan in 1999 where he met several members of Al-Qaida, including bin Laden. Medunjanin's friends Zarein Ahmedzay and Najibullah Zazi, accused of plotting with him to attack the city subways, had said they had met some of the Al-Qaida members in Pakistan nine years later. "It was just the two of us in a room, and he explained to me his justification for the mission," Badat said referring to his meeting with bin Laden and his plot to blow up American planes with shoe bombs. "He (bin Laden) said that the American economy is like a chain. If you break one link of the chain, the whole economy will be brought down," Badat testified. Badat said bin Laden had himself dispatched him to board a plane with the bomb sewn in his shoe. It was part of bin Laden's plans to use shoe bombs to detonate planes in mid-air which would in turn bring the American economy down. The New York Times report said Badat told the Brooklyn court that the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed had personally wished him and the other shoe bomber Richard Reid well on their mission. However, Badat never went ahead with putting his plan into action as he had become fearful and worried that his family would get dragged into an investigation. He said his Qaida handlers about his decision but did not contact law enforcement, saying he remained committed to the "jihadist ideology," the New York Times report added. — PTI
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Five held in UK anti-terror raid London, April 24 They said the raids were "intelligence-led", and were conducted at separate addresses. A Scotland Yard statement said: "All five were arrested at separate residential addresses in Luton. They have been taken to a central London police station where they remain in custody." "This morning's arrests, at five different houses in the Bury Park area, are part of a pre-planned, intelligence led operation by the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command," the police said in a separate statement. The Bury Park area is home to a large Pakistani community. — PTI
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EU wants India to join strikes on pirate bases, Centre yet to take call
However, this international effort by warships of India, China, Russia, the EU and the NATO-led grouping is clearly not enough. Incidents of piracy have decreased, but it remains a major threat to shipping activity and human lives. The 27-member European Union has now arrived at a conclusion that the solution to piracy lies “on land” in Somalia. The effort on the sea has to be buttressed by intervention in improving lives of Somalis. The EU wants India to put its Navy on board a new “forward from the seas” policy. The policy authorises warships and aircraft to bomb suspected pirate bases on the Somalia coast. It is much similar to the drone attacks carried out by the NATO forces in Afghanistan and tribal areas of Pakistan. Admiral Duncan Potts, Operations Commander “Atalanta” (EU naval mission in the Indian Ocean), says, “We now have permission to isolate logistics sites of pirates.” The confidence is probably backed by inputs from an inter-agency intelligence-sharing centre set up in the islands of Seychelles located in the Indian Ocean. Talking to a group of Indian journalists, Admiral Duncan Potts said, “The EU was convinced that the establishment of the rule of law and economic development would undermine the breeding ground for organised crime in Somalia.” On the Indian side, its naval delegation has just returned home after attending the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) in South Africa. The issue was discussed at the symposium, but a final call on letting Indian forces intervene would have to be taken by the Defence Ministry and the Indian Government. It was around 19 years ago in 1993 that India first sent its troop to Somalia under the UN peacekeeping operation “Restore Hope”. A brigade of around 4,500 personnel was sent to southern Somalia. It restored a semblance of order in the area, but suffered casualties. The UN peacekeeping force was withdrawn after a while and Somalia spiralled down into a chaos. Earlier in Brussels, Director General of EU Military Staff Lt General Ton Van Osch averred that “piracy cannot be solved with only military action at sea”. Pirates are getting bolder by the day. They have greater endurance at sea and are equipped with modern weapons. The EU’s new regional maritime capacity-building mission, currently under preparation, would have two main tasks: Strengthening the sea-going maritime capacities of Djibouti, Kenya, Tanzania and the Seychelles; strengthening the rule of law in the Somali regions of Puntland and Somaliland by developing a Coastal Police Force. For this, it also intends to bank on India for support in training the civilian side, judges, health professionals, educationists etc. The EU is of the opinion that India could increase it deployment from the existing one warship. NEW POLICY
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Special to the
tribune
A British court is expected to pronounce on whether an Indian doctor was surfing the Internet for cricket statistics before and after he mistakenly prescribed deadly drug overdoses for two elderly patients.
Leeds Crown Court has heard how 37-year-old Dr Rajendra Kokkarne was checking for cricket results, as well as attending to personal banking and reading emails when he prescribed 10 times the normal dose of pain relief drug morphine sulphate back in 2008. His patients, 78-year-old Beryl Barber and 86-year-old Eric Watson were being looked after at a care home and both were Alzheimer's and dementia sufferers. Barber also had painful ulcers on her foot, while Watson also had a urinary infection and mouth ulcers. Both died from morphine poisoning within three days. The jury has been told that the drug was inappropriate for their circumstances. Kokkarne, who denies two counts of manslaughter by gross negligence, has told the police in a prepared statement that he intended to prescribe a lower dose and was unaware that he had made an error. Prosecutor Robert Smith QC told the court that records showed the doctor had not looked at the patients' records and was surfing the internet on the computer at his medical practice. Analysis of those records, according at the Victoria Medical Centre in the town of Dewsbury in West Yorkshire, according to Smith, show that Kokkarne was using the computer to access cricket results from India, as well as to access news, emails and personal banking details. "The evidence shows that in between dealing with patients, Kokkarne had been watching sport and engaging in emails and other searches and other contacts using the practice computer." Smith added that Kokkarne failed to make a clinical assessment of each patient and further did not follow guidelines for administering relief to elderly patients. He added that the nurse who administered the drugs and the chemist who dispensed them did not question the accuracy of the prescription. "Criticism can properly be leveled at all of them", Smith said. "The prosecution recognised Kokkarne was not alone in making mistakes but they submit the primary responsibility lay with him in his position as a medical practitioner, with detailed and specialist knowledge of the effect of such drugs on patients of this age and who no established tolerance to the drug." Relatives of both the patients have told how shocked they were when they visited them in early February 2008. Barber's daughter, Claire Gill, said about her mother in a statement to the court: "There was a dramatic difference in her facial appearance. Her face was drawn, her eyes were closed and her breathing was shallow." Watson's step daughter, Sandra Hooley, said in her statement: "I could see what looked like a little shrunken head with his mouth wide open and his eyes slammed shut. A nurse said he had been given some morphine the day before."
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Contempt of Court
Pakistan’s Supreme Court will announce on Thursday its verdict in a contempt of court case against Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani for failing to act on its directives to reopen graft cases against President Asif Ali Zardari.
A seven-judge bench headed by Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk on Tuesday reserved its judgement in the case after the completion of arguments by the defence and the prosecution. Gilani could face a six-month prison term and disqualification if he is convicted. Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk asked Gilani’s counsel, Aitzaz Ahsan, to ensure that the premier is present in court when the verdict is announced on Thursday. The Supreme Court has been pressuring the government to revive cases of alleged money laundering against Zardari in Switzerland since December 2009, when it struck down a graft amnesty issued by former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.
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New York, April 24
In the operations room at the headquarters of the European Union Naval Force (EU NAVFOR) here, a sophisticated software enables commanders on board 25 multi-nation warships trawling the Indian Ocean to know which merchant vessels could be vulnerable to piracy. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and maritime reconnaissance aircraft beam live pictures and pick signals to complete the information chart.