W O R L D

Ecuador dares UK, grants asylum to Julian Assange
London/Quito, August 16
Ecuador today granted political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, setting stage for an unprecedented diplomatic stand-off with the UK, which has threatened to extradite him to Sweden come what may.

A supporter of Julian Assange holds a banner outside the Ecuador Embassy in London on Thursday. — AFP

25 killed in Pak sectarian attack
Islamabad, August 16
Suspected militants today pulled out 25 Shia Muslims from three buses and shot them dead in northern Pakistan, the third such sectarian attack in the restive region in six months.

Assad’s brother lost leg in bomb attack: Sources
Beirut, August 16
President Bashar al-Assad's feared brother Maher lost a leg in a bomb attack on the Syrian leader's security cabinet a month ago, sources said on Thursday, in a severe blow to one of the main military commanders fighting an 17-month-old insurgency. The attack on a meeting of Assad's security chiefs in Damascus on July 18 killed four members of the president's inner circle, including his brother-in-law, and emboldened the rebels to take their fight to the capital for the first time.

Smoke billows from the scene of an explosion outside a Damascus hotel where UN observers are staying. — AP/PTI

Ecuador dares UK, grants asylum to Julian Assange
UK says it will extradite WikiLeaks chief despite asylum

London/Quito, August 16
Ecuador today granted political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, setting stage for an unprecedented diplomatic stand-off with the UK, which has threatened to extradite him to Sweden come what may.

Two months after he dramatically sought refuge in its embassy here to evade extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault charges, Ecuador today said it had decided to take Assange under its wing over fears that he might eventually be sent to the US to face "military courts".

Ecuadoran Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said at a news conference in the Ecuador capital that Sweden, Britain and the US had failed to provide guarantees that the 41-year-old Australian will not be extradited to the US from Sweden.

"The Ecuador government, loyal to its tradition to protect those who seek refuge with us at our diplomatic missions, has decided to grant diplomatic asylum to Mr Assange," he said.

Following the announcement, Britain said it was a "disappointing" decision but insisted London was under "obligation" to extradite the whistleblower to Sweden.

"We shall carry out that obligation. The Ecuadorian government's decision this afternoon does not change that," said a Foreign Office spokeswoman, making it clear that getting an asylum was not an end to Assange's woes.

Earlier, Britain said it had powers under the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act, 1987, to withdraw the embassy's diplomatic status and then enter the building to arrest Assange and extradite him to Sweden.

Ecuador had said that Britian was threatening to "assault our embassy" if Assange was not handed over.

An unprecedented diplomatic row has arisen from Ecuador's decision as Assange remains on British police's radar whose personnel are positioned right outside the embassy to arrest him as soon as he steps out.

Experts said there were virtually no precedents to such a diplomatic impasse, but cited the case of a Hungarian priest who stayed in the US Embassy in Budapest for nearly 15 years following the Hungarian uprising in 1956. — PTI

25 killed in Pak sectarian attack
Militants pull out victims from 3 buses, check I-cards, shoot them

Islamabad, August 16
Suspected militants today pulled out 25 Shia Muslims from three buses and shot them dead in northern Pakistan, the third such sectarian attack in the restive region in six months.

The gunmen stopped the buses in Naran Valley of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province and asked the people to get out of the vehicles, witnesses told TV news channels.

The gunmen, who were masked, shot dead 25 Shias after checking their identity cards and papers. Several others were injured in the attack, officials said.

Witnesses said ten to 15 gunmen were involved in the incident, which officials described as a sectarian attack. Some reports said the attackers were wearing army uniforms though this could not be independently confirmed.

The buses were going from the garrison city of Rawalpindi to Astore in Gilgit-Baltistan, which has a sizeable Shia population.

The incident occurred at a spot about 160 km from Islamabad. No group claimed responsibility for the attack. Sectarian violence has killed hundreds of Pakistanis in recent years. This was the third attack on Shias travelling in buses in the northern part of the country in six months.

On February 28, gunmen in military uniforms dragged 18 Shia Muslim men out of buses and shot them dead.

On April 3, a Sunni mob dragged nine Shia men from buses and shot them in Chilas town. Most such attacks are blamed on the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Shias and other minority communities say those behind sectarian violence are rarely caught or punished. — PTI

Obama ‘recklessly leaked’ details of Osama raid

Washington, August 16
A group of former special operations and CIA officers have accused US President Barack Obama of "recklessly" leaking information about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan to gain political advantage.

In a 22-minute video called "Dishonorable Disclosures" the group of former special operations and CIA officers have made the accusations against the President saying that Obama takes too much credit for the killing of the Al-Qaida leader and has recklessly leaked information about the raid.

The group, called the Special Operations Opsec Education Fund, using shorthand for "operational security", describes itself as non-partisan, but some of its leaders have been involved in Republican campaigns and Tea Party groups.

The Obama campaign immediately compared the effort to the "Swift Boat" advertisements against Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign.

Like that effort, the Opsec site goes after Obama's strong points on national security, specifically his role in overseeing the military-Central Intelligence Agency raid that killed bin Laden, the founder of Al-Qaida, in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad in May 2011.

In the series of interviews in the video posted on the group's website, the former military and intelligence officers accuse Obama of seeking political gain by disclosing successful secret operations.

"As a citizen, it is my civic duty to tell the president to stop leaking information to the enemy," Benjamin Smith, identified in the video as a former Navy SEAL said. "It will get Americans killed," he added.

"Mr President, you did not kill Osama bin Laden. America did," he said. Smith said the ad campaign pays no heed to political affiliation. — PTI

Assad’s brother lost leg in bomb attack: Sources

Beirut, August 16
President Bashar al-Assad's feared brother Maher lost a leg in a bomb attack on the Syrian leader's security cabinet a month ago, sources said on Thursday, in a severe blow to one of the main military commanders fighting an 17-month-old insurgency.

The attack on a meeting of Assad's security chiefs in Damascus on July 18 killed four members of the president's inner circle, including his brother-in-law, and emboldened the rebels to take their fight to the capital for the first time.

Maher has not been seen in public since the bombing, while Assad himself has restricted appearances to recorded clips broadcast on television, leading to speculation about the effectiveness of the leadership as the rebellion grows.

Maher, a close associate of the president, has acquired a fearsome reputation as the commander of the Syrian army's Republican Guard and 4th Division, elite formations largely composed of troops from the Assads' minority Alawite sect, whose loyalty can be relied on in the fight against the rebels.

"We heard that he (Maher al-Assad) lost one of his legs during the explosion, but don't know any more," a Western diplomat told Reuters. A Gulf source confirmed the report: "He lost one of his legs. The news is true." — Reuters