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Musharraf charged with Bhutto’s murder
Rawalpindi, August 20
A court in Pakistan charged former military dictator Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday with the 2007 murder of Benazir Bhutto in an unprecedented move likely to anger the all-powerful army.

Residents move past a portrait of slain Opposition leader and former PM Benazir Bhutto at her assassination site in Rawalpindi on Monday; (right) Pakistan’s former President and military ruler Pervez Musharraf. — AFP/AP

Special to the tribune
Rare account of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s court up for auction in UK today
A rare account of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s court, written in French by the French botanist and geologist Victor Jacquemont, is being offered for sale on Wednesday in the UK by Mullocks auctioneers.

More than 200 dead or missing in China floods
Beijing, August 20
Heavy rains brought by a typhoon triggered landslides in southern China that buried homes and vehicles and killed at least 15 people, as the number of dead or missing from recent flooding in the country surged past 200.

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Musharraf charged with Bhutto’s murder

Rawalpindi, August 20
A court in Pakistan charged former military dictator Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday with the 2007 murder of Benazir Bhutto in an unprecedented move likely to anger the all-powerful army. The indictment of the army chief who seized power in a 1999 coup — once Pakistan's most powerful man — was almost an unthinkable event in a nuclear-armed country ruled by the military for half of its 66-year history.

Bhutto, a former prime minister, died in a suicide gun and bomb attack in December 2007 after a campaign rally in the city of Rawalpindi, not far from the heavily guarded court room where the charges were read out on Tuesday.

"He should be tried," the public prosecutor, Mohammad Azhar, told reporters after a brief hearing during which the three charges of murder, conspiracy to murder and facilitation of murder were read out to Musharraf. The case has shattered an unwritten rule that the top military brass are untouchable as the South Asian country tries to shake off the legacy of decades of military rule under the new government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. It was Musharraf who toppled Sharif's government in the 1999 coup, and memories of that time are still fresh in the current administration. Sharif was sentenced to a life in jail by Musharraf but was eventually allowed to go into exile. Security was tight in Rawalpindi — the seat of Pakistan’s military headquarters — after a previous hearing on August 6 was delayed due to threats to Musharraf’s life.

The Pakistani Taliban have on many occasions threatened to kill him. Hundreds of police were deployed along the main road leading to the court as well as on rooftops as Musharraf's car arrived.

Journalists were not allowed in the court room for the hearing which lasted about 20 minutes. Musharraf, who turned 70 on August 11, made no public remarks as he arrived but denied all the charges against him once inside the court room, a lawyer from his defence team told Reuters.

“All the cases against Musharraf are fabricated. He denied all the charges,” said Afshan Adil, the lawyer. The next hearing was set for August 27. Observers believe it is still possible Musharraf would be allowed to go back into exile in a face saving solution. Imtiaz Gul, an independent security analyst, said the indictment might be profoundly symbolic but there was still little chance of Musharraf actually being convicted. — Reuters

no immunity

The case has shattered an unwritten rule that the top military brass are untouchable as the South Asian country tries to shake off the legacy of decades of military rule under the new government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
It was Musharraf who toppled Sharif's government in the 1999 coup, and memories of that time are still fresh in the current administration

Special to the tribune
Rare account of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s court up for auction in UK today
Shyam Bhatia in London

A rare account of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s court, written in French by the French botanist and geologist Victor Jacquemont, is being offered for sale on Wednesday in the UK by Mullocks auctioneers.

The two-volume leather-bound account by Jacquemont includes the Frenchman’s meeting with Ranjit Singh at Lahore in 1931. In his account of the royal Sikh Durbar, Jacquemont writes about the Akalis, saying, ‘...the Akalis or immortals are properly speaking Sikh faqirs. The sacred pool at Amritsar is their headquarters but they often spread themselves over the Punjab in large and formidable parties. Ranjit Singh wisely turns their ferocity to his own advantage.

“He enlists them in his armies and employs them preferably against Mussalman enemies. He has at the moment 4,000-5,000 of them in the army which he maintains at Attock ready to march against another fanatic Syed. I have only seen two of them in the streets of Amritsar, it was evening and the matches of their muskets hung ready lighted. I had never seen more sinister looking figures.”

In his description of Ranjit Singh, he comments: “His right eye is very large, his nose is fine and slightly turned up, his mouth firm and his teeth excellent. He wears a slight moustache which he twists incessantly with his fingers and a long thin beard which falls to his chest. His expression shows nobility of thought, shrewdness and penetration and these indications are correct.”

Other items for sale include an 1839 map of the Punjab by Chapman and Hall, which shows the Punjab kingdom in the year Ranjit Singh died.

An 1844 lithograph by Emily Eden of Ranjit Singh’s grandson, Purtaub Singh, son of Maharaja Sher Singh, is additionally part of the auction. After Ranjit Singh died in 1839 and the Sikh nation descended into confusion and anarchy in the battles to establish his successor, his son Sher Singh finally ascended the throne in 1841, but was killed by some Sikh chieftains in a massacre at Lahore in September 1843. His young son Purtaub Singh was also killed.

A file box of documents from the personal archives of Prince Frederick, Ranjit Singh’s grandson and second son of Maharajah Dalip Singh, is also part of the sale. It contains some 60 signed letters addressed to the Prince, also numerous documents, notes in the Prince’s hand, genealogy and pedigrees compiled and researched by the Prince, altogether some 200 items in original storage box, which came from his personal archives at Blo’ Norton Hall, Norfolk, with a handwritten catalogue titled ‘Manuscripts in the collection of Prince Frederick Duleep’.

More than 200 dead or missing in China floods

Beijing, August 20
Heavy rains brought by a typhoon triggered landslides in southern China that buried homes and vehicles and killed at least 15 people, as the number of dead or missing from recent flooding in the country surged past 200.

Nine people were reported killed in Hunan province and six in Guangxi, where vehicles were covered in mud and rocks along a mountain highway, local flood control offices said.

The deaths come after three people died on Sunday in a landslide near the Guangxi city of Wuzhou. — AP

Egypt arrests Brotherhood’s spiritual leader

Cairo, August 20
Egypt’s military-backed government on Tuesday intensified its crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood by arresting the group’s spiritual leader, delivering a major blow to the Islamists demanding reinstatement of ousted President Mohamed Morsy.

Mohammed Badie, 70, the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, was arrested in an apartment close to Rabia al-Adawiya square, where Islamist supporters of Morsi held a vigil before it was cleared in a bloody crackdown by security forces last week.

The detention of Badie could throw the Brotherhood into further disarray as the Islamist group continues to protest the ouster of Morsy by the army on July 3. The Brotherhood quickly responded to the government’s move by appointing Mahmoud Ezzat as the supreme guide of the group. — PTI

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Major radioactive water leak from Fukushima N-plant
tokyo: At least 300 tonnes of highly radioactive water leaked from one of the storage tanks at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the worst leakage yet from the tanks, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said Tuesday. TEPCO found the leakage Monday as water level in one of the tanks was lowered by about 2.9 metres. The 11-metre-high tank contained about 1,000 tonnes of water before and an estimated 300 tonnes of water is thought to have leaked, Xinhua reported. — IANS

‘UK had newspaper disks destroyed’
london: British agents oversaw the destruction of an unspecified number of the Guardian newspaper’s hard drives in an apparent bid to keep the fruit of Edward Snowden's leaks safe from Chinese spies, the paper’s editor has said. Alan Rusbridger made the claim in an opinion piece published on the Guardian’s website, saying that a pair of staffers from British eavesdropping agency GCHQ monitored the process. — AP

Girl charged with assault on Sikh denied bail
london: A British court has rejected bail plea of a teenage girl caught on video punching a 80-year-old Sikh man in the face and shoving him to the ground. Coral Millerchip, 19, was arrested on Friday and charged with assault of the man at Coventry, a city northwest of London. The British girl appeared before Coventry Magistrates Court yesterday and has been remanded to custody until November 25. — PTI

US designates Pak madrassa as terror body
washington: The US designated a Pakistani madrassa as a terrorist organisation supporting Lashkar-e-Taiba, Al-Qaida and Taliban, the first time such action has been taken against a seminary. Ganj Madrassa in northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, officially known as Jamia Taleem-Ul-Quran-Wal-Hadith Madrassa, is the first seminary to be target of sanctions that forbid Americans from having business interaction with it. — PTI

Fake bomb detectors: Businessman jailed
london: British authorities faced a furore on Monday after they held the partner of a journalist who worked with Edward Snowden to expose US mass surveillance programmes for almost nine hours under anti-terror laws. David Miranda — the Brazilian partner of Glenn.— PTI

Spain tells Britain to remove Gibraltar ‘reef’
madrid: Spain told Britain on Tuesday it must remove 70 concrete blocks dropped into the waters off Gibraltar before Madrid will agree to dialogue in a heated dispute over the British outpost. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, foreign minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo sharply criticised Gibraltar’s creation of the reef last month in disputed waters. — AFP

Crime novelist Elmore Leonard dead
New York: American author Elmore Leonard,whose ear for gritty, realistic dialogue helped bring dozens of hard-bitten crooks, cops and cowboys to life in nearly 50 novels, died on Tuesday several weeks after a stroke. He was 87. His more than 40 novels were populated by pathetic schemers, clever con men and casual killers. Many of the novels, notably "Out of Sight," "Get Shorty" and "Be Cool", were made into films. Critics adored his simple, direct language. — AP