Ashura blast not seems a suicidal attack: Malik

Friday, January 01, 2010


KARACHI: Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the Ashura blast is unlikely a suicide blast and culprits will be trace out soon.

Talking to media in Rangers headquarter with Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Dr. Farooq Sattar, Malik said the investigations will be completed till tomorrow. The markets were set on fire with a proper planning.

He said prime minister is concerned over Karachi situation. Some persons have been arrested after identified in the footage. Anyone involve in the target killing will not be spared. Not only MQM but PPP workers were also killed in target killing incidents, he added.

Dr. Farooq Sattar at this occasion said target killing of MQM activists is continued and two more workers were killed on the last day 2009.

He denounced the target killing incidents and said city’s peace should be retained. Land and drug mafia are behind these killings, Dr. Farooq added.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=94982

Monday, February 15, 2010

The interrupted process of dialogue between Pakistan and India resumes before the end of this month. Islamabad has accepted an invitation for its foreign secretary to visit New Delhi and the prime minister has instructed him to raise a variety of core issues, including resumption of the composite dialogue. So far, India has been reluctant to take this step. Pakistan, quite sensibly, has decided for the moment not to press it too hard. After all it is only with some difficulty that India has finally agreed to push the talks train forward. Mr Gilani has also identified Kashmir and the water issue as other matters to be taken up with India. There can be no doubt at all that the issue of Kashmir is fundamental to the future of relations between the two countries. There can be no skirting around this fact. But, exactly when this issue should be made the centre of the dialogue is an issue in itself and has long been disputed. Views vary. Peace activists argue that it is essential that confidence be built up before broaching a subject on which the two sides stand harshly divided. Others hold that it must be tackled head on and that only when it is settled can a move be made towards settling other issues.

There are unfortunately no simple answers. Both points of view have their advantages and disadvantages. But what is important for now is that the process of dialogue should move forward. There is much to be gained through this. It is important that the tensions that have existed since November 2008 be wrapped up and put away. This indeed is important not only for the sake of the people of both the countries, but also to tackle terrorism. Joint solutions need to be found to trans-national issues that involve militancy and the root causes that give rise to it. The agreement to resume talks is an important step forward. Islamabad must be commended for its unstinting efforts in this regard and for its refusal to allow Indian intransigence to stand in the way of its determination. We hope that the foreign-secretary level meeting in New Delhi leads towards more efforts to build peace and by doing so helps create the stability the region so badly needs.

courtesy:http://www.thenews.com.pk

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'N' slates PM's remarks

By: Abrar Saeed
Published: February 16, 2010

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz on Monday staged a walkout from National Assembly and marched up to the Constitution Avenue to express solidarity with the lawyers’ fraternity and
judiciary, and vowed not to let the wishes and whims of a 'single person' prevail upon the aspirations of the 170 million masses.
Soon after the culmination of Prime Minister’s address in the National Assembly, PML-N MPs led by Leader of Opposition Ch Nisar Ali Khan, staged a walkout and in the wet weather marched to Constitution Avenue. Talking to media persons there, PML-N senior leaders Makhdoom Javaid Hashmi and Khawaja Saad Rafique said that lawyers community, civil society and 170 million masses were standing behind the judiciary and would not let the rulers intimidate it.
Javaid Hashmi regretted that the elected President Asif Ali Zardari was behaving and acting like a dictator trying to impose his personal wishes and whims on the whole nation.
He said that they would not let this ‘one man show’ prevail in the country and for the supremacy of Parliament and strengthening of all the state organs including judiciary they could go to any extent. He warned the ruling Pakistan People’s Party to refrain from indulging in activities aimed to dismantle the apex judiciary and said that his party could go to any extent to uphold the sanctity of the state institutions and supremacy of Parliament and Constitution.
He grilled Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani for taking the credit of restoring judges through an executive order and that they (judges) would still be requiring ratification from the Parliament to be on their seats.

Courtesy:http://www.nation.com.pk/

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Snowfall in Dir after 18 yrs

Associated Press of Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: A spell of snowfall after 18 years not only turned weather pleasant but also delighted residents of Dir of Malakand division on Monday morning.

Mercury dropped down as snowfall and heavy downpour continued in Jandol, Chakdara, Samar,Bagh and Talaash. Flooding in drains caused suspension of traffic in Chakdara and Talaash areas. Severe cold and disruption in power supply have disturbed routine life in several areas, reported a private news channel.All educational institutions have been closed down in the area.

The snowfall in Dir has broken 18-year old record. Heavy snowstorm hit Upper and Lower Dir.

Meanwhile, non-stop snowfall suspended normal day life in Swat. According to the Metrological Department, the city received two and a half feet snow while up to 4 feet snow was measured over the hills. Heavy rain continued in plain areas of Swat.

Mingora city received first snowfall in two years and the lowest minimum temperature of the city was recorded at -4 C.

Reference:http://www.thepost.com.pk

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Gilani's threat

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Today the nation is hostage to a group of desperate men determined to cling on to power – and willing to do whatever may be necessary in order to frustrate those who prefer democracy to autocracy. That the puppet master sits in the presidency was clear from the actions and words of his leading marionette, Prime Minister Gilani, who put on a show for parliament that was obviously scripted some place other than his own office. Mr Gilani now stands exposed for what he really is – the presidential puppet who does as he is told. What he told us live on television was that parliament has yet to endorse the executive order issued last March for the restoration of the pre-November 3 judges; the underlying but unstated position being that in a desperate throw of the dice President Zardari could use that as an excuse to withdraw the executive order. Parliamentarians on all sides quickly understood the implication of Mr Gilani's remarks; fuelling an intense round of speculation and debate both in and out of the House.

No matter that governmental damage-control teams swung into action saying Mr Gilani's remarks were 'off the cuff' -- the reality is that the prime minister is neither a simpleton nor politically naive and he was well aware of the way in which his remarks would be understood and interpreted. It was a thinly-veiled threat, plain for all to see and the strongest signal we have yet had that desperation now rules in the corridors of power. Assorted constitutional and legal experts were quick to brand the PM's remarks as little more than a joke in poor taste; as the Supreme Court in its July 31, 2009 order had left no constitutional or legal room enabling the undoing of what was done in March 2009. If the government is seriously considering dispensing with an independent judiciary altogether, it is a prospect that should appall any right-minded person and gives a clue as to what underlies the entire drama; namely that if there is one thing this government truly fears it is an independent judiciary. Forget the Taliban, the last-gasp economy, un-built dams and an education system that was fresh in the Jurassic era – what the men in power are really worried about is seeing to it that the president manages to save his own skin.

Reference:http://thenews.jang.com.pk

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briefs...

Friday, February 19, 2010

India to increase defence budget

NEW DELHI: Indian Minister of State for Defence MM Pallam Raju said on Thursday his ministry is expected to increase by 15 to 20 per cent budget allocation for defence in the next fiscal year.



Four soldiers, seven Afghan cops killed

MARJAH: The Nato forces control the main roads and markets in the besieged Taliban stronghold of Marjah, a Marine general said on Thursday, even as fighting raged elsewhere in the southern farming town. A British general said he expected it would take another month to secure the town. Nato said four service members died on Thursday, bringing the number of allied troops killed in the offensive to nine Nato troops and one Afghan soldier. Also on Thursday, a Nato air strike in northern Afghanistan missed a group of insurgents and killed seven Afghan policemen, the Afghan Interior Ministry said.



Three children among seven butchered

ATTOCK: Seven persons, including two women and three children, of the same family, were slaughtered by some unknown killers at Kalu Kalah Village of Tehsil Hazro on Thursday. Police sources told APP that a family head, Muhammad Atlaf, his wife Naseera Bibi, son Muhammad Asif and daughter-in-law Saiqa Bibi were found slaughtered at their home early on Thursday morning. The bodies of three children of the deceased Asif, including four-year old Wasiq Ali, five-year old Muhammad Ali and three-year old Noor Bibi were also found in the nearby well. Bullet wounds were also found on the bodies of the deceased.



JF-17 joins PAF fleet

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan attained another milestone on Friday when the first JF-17 Thunder squadron joined the PAF fleet. Air Chief Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman was the chief guest on the occasion.



Holbrooke calls on COAS

RAWALPINDI: Richard Holbrooke, called on Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani here on Thursday.

350 Sikh pilgrims arrive
By our correspondent

LAHORE: More than 350 Sikh pilgrims, led by Sardar Jageer Singh, on Thursday arrived at the Wahga Railway Station to celebrate the day on which the birthplace of Guru Nanak at Nankana Sahib was freed from the Hindus. The pilgrims were greeted at the Wagha Railway Station by Pakistan Sikh Gurdawara Perbandahk Committee Chief Sardar Sham Singh, former Chief Sardar Bishan Singh and officials of the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB). Talking to newsmen on the occasion, Sardar Jagheer Singh said that they were overwhelmed by the reception they got on their arrival in Pakistan.



Multan Bar team calls on CJ

ISLAMABAD: Administration of justice is considered to be sole duty of the courts and legal fraternity, said Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on Thursday. He was addressing the delegation of District Bar, Multan, headed by President Sher Zaman Qureshi that called on him in the Supreme Court Building, Islamabad. A country could not claim to have good governance without easy, affordable, speedy and impartial justice system for the people, the chief justice added. Iftikhar Chaudhry advised the lawyers to be honest and sincere to their profession and pay more attention towards their cases and avoid adjournments.


Courtesy:http://thenews.jang.com.pk

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Lahore blast kills 5, injures 45

Updated at: 0930 PST, Monday, March 08, 2010


LAHORE: At least five people were killed and 45 injured in a powerful blast in Lahore area of Model Town, which targeted a government office, Geo News reported Monday.

The deceased include two women and three men.

Talking to media, Dr Javed Ikram Principal Allama Iqbal Medical College said at least 45 injured were brought to Jinnah Hospital.

Talking to media, DCO Sajjad Bhutta said the blast may be a suicide car attack, adding at least 600-kilogram explosives have been used in the blast.

Talking to media, Punjab police chief Tariq Salim Dogar said the secret agency was working in a residential area as there is shortage of offices; the targeted office was to be shifted to its proper working place.

The police chief said the blast targeted the special investigation unit of the secret agency.

It should be mentioned that the secret agency’s investigation and research office was working at a house situated in K Block of Model Town.

According to police sources, the security guard intercepted a man entering the building of a secret agency, who blew him up destroying the entire building.

The blast sound was heard far and wide. The blast was so powerful that it created a huge crater on the blast site and the nearby buildings were harmed.

A secret agency office was targeted at 815am near the seminary of Dr Israr Ahmed in K Block of Model town.

The blast razed the building to ground. The injured are being taken out from under the rubble. Of the 45 injured, nine are in critical state.

There are 13 women among the injured.

Ambulances, police and other rescue teams are busy with rescue work. Also, heavy machinery have arrived on the spot to retrieve the bodies and the injured people from under the people.

The blast site has been cordoned off, so that the rescue work could head smoothly.

An eyewitness, standing on his rooftop near the blast area, said he could watch the smokes billowing from the blast site.

http://geo.tv/3-8-2010/60622.htm

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Lahore suicide attacks: six security men among 20 dead

Updated at: 1410 PST, Friday, March 12, 2010

LAHORE: Two suicide attackers blew themselves up near security forces vehicles in RA Bazar area of South Cantt as crowds gathered for Friday prayers killing at least 20 people including six security personnel and injuring 40, Geo News reported.

Both the bombers were on foot, SSP Operations Chaudhry Shafiq told Geo News.

Six security men were among the dead, he added.

Director General Rescue 1122 told Geo News that 20 people have been killed and forty injured.

Rescue workers and paramedics rushed to the R A Bazaar, a densely populated area of the city. The area was crowded as the blasts occurred shortly before the main Friday prayers were to start.

Emergency has been declared in city hospitals and injured were shifted to CMH and other hospitals.

Security forces have cordoned off the area and traffic was blocked. Media was not allowed to go near the scene.

The blasts came four days after a suicide car bomber destroyed offices used to interrogate suspected militants in an upmarket district of Lahore.


http://thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=100550

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ISLAMABAD: Dr Shams Hassan Faruqi sits amid his rocks and geological records, shakes his bearded head and stares at me. “I strongly doubt if the children are alive,” he says. “Probably, they have expired.” He says this in a strange way, mournful but resigned, yet somehow he seems oddly unmoved. As a witness, supposedly, to the mysterious 2008 re-appearance of Aafia Siddiqui – the “most wanted woman in the world”, according to former US attorney general John Ashcroft – I guess this 73-year-old Pakistani geologist is used to the limelight. But the children, I ask him again. What happened to the children?

Dr Faruqi is Aafia Siddiqui’s uncle and he produces a photograph of his niece at the age of 13, picnicking in the Margalla hills above Islamabad, a smiling girl in a yellow shalwar khameez, half-leaning against a tree. She does not look like the stuff of which Al-Qaeda operatives are made. Yet she is now a semi-icon in Pakistan, a country which may well have been involved in her original kidnapping and which now oh-so-desperately wants her back from an American prison. Her children, weirdly, disconcertingly, have been forgotten.

Aafia Siddiqui’s story is now as famous in Pakistan as it is notorious in a New York City courtroom where her trial for trying to kill an American soldier in the Afghan city of Ghazni in 2008 – she was convicted this month and faces a minimum of 20 years in prison on just one of the charges against her – is regarded as a symbol of American injustice. “Shame on America,” posters scream in all of Pakistan’s major cities. She is known as the “grey lady of Bagram”, supposedly tortured for five years in America’s cruel Afghan prison. President Asif Ali Zardari has asked American envoy Richard Holbrooke to repatriate Siddiqui under the Pakistan-US prisoner exchange scheme, while the Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has dubbed her a “daughter of the nation”. Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif promises to demand her release. But none of them mention the children. Ahmed, Sulieman and Maryam are their names.

Ahmed was returned to Pakistan from Afghanistan in 2008, but Dr Faruqi tells me he doesn’t believe for a moment that it is Aafia Siddiqui’s son. “He came here to stay with me, but he said he didn’t know Aafia until he was taken to Ghazni. He said to me: ‘I was in the big earthquake in Afghanistan and my brothers and sisters were killed in their home while I was out fetching water – that’s what saved my life.’ He told me that after the earthquake, he was put in an orphanage in Kabul. He was shown a photograph of my niece Aafia and said he did not know this lady, that he had never seen her before. Then he was taken to Ghazni and told to sit next to this woman – my niece. The boy is intelligent. He is simple. He is honest.”

All such mysteries require a “story-so-far”. It goes like this. Aafia Siddiqui, a 38-year-old neuroscientist, an MIT alumna and Brandeis university PhD, disappeared after leaving her sister’s home for Karachi airport in 2003, taking Ahmed, Sulieman and Maryam with her. The Americans say she was a leading Al-Qaeda operative. So does her ex-husband. She had re-married Ammar al-Baluchi, currently in Guantanamo Bay, a cousin of Ramzi Yousef who was convicted for the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing. Not, you might, say, a healthy curriculum vitae in the West’s obsessive “war on terror”. In 2004, the UN identified her as an Al-Qaeda operative.

But released inmates from the notorious American prison at Bagram near Kabul– where torture is commonplace and at least three prisoners have been murdered – have stated that there was a woman held there, a woman whose nightly screams prompted them to go on hunger strike. She was dubbed the “grey lady of Bagram”. At her New York trial, Siddiqui demanded that Jewish members of the jury be dismissed, she fired her own defence lawyers who said she had become unbalanced after torture; Siddiqui blurted out that she had been tortured in secret prisons before her arrest. “If you were in a secret prison ... where children were murdered...” she said.

And so to the town of Ghazni, south of Kabul. It was here that Afghan police stopped her in 2008, carrying a handbag which supposedly contained details of chemical weapons and radiological agents, notes on mass casualty attacks on US targets and maps of Ghazni. American soldiers and FBI agents were summoned to question her and arrived in Ghazni without realising that Siddiqui was in the same room, sitting behind a curtain. According to their evidence, she managed to take one of their M-4 assault rifles and opened fire. She missed but was cut down by two bullets from a 9mm pistol fired by one of the soldiers. Hence the charges. Hence the conviction.

She wasn’t helped by an alleged statement by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – the man who supposedly planned 9/11 and who is the uncle of her second husband, Ammar al-Baluchi – who claimed that Aafia Siddiqui was a senior Al-Qaeda agent. But then, he’d just been waterboarded 183 times in a month – which hardly makes his evidence, to use a phrase, water-tight.

The questions are obvious. What on earth was a Pakistani American with a Brandeis degree doing in Ghazni with a handbag containing American targets? And why, if her family was so fearful for her, didn’t they report her missing in 2003, go to the press and tell the story of the children? Ahmed – son of Siddiqui or Afghan orphan, depending on your point of view – is now staying with Siddiqui’s sister, Fauzia, in Karachi; but she refuses to let him talk to journalists. The Americans have shown no interest in him – even less in the other two, younger children. Why not?

It’s odd, to say the least, that Dr Faruqi also maintains that in 2008 – before the Ghazni incident – Aafia Siddiqui turned up at his home in the suburbs of Islamabad. “She was wearing a burqa and got out of the car, just outside here,” he says, pointing to the tree-lined street outside his office window. “I only caught sight of her once, and I said ‘You have changed your nose’. But it was her. We talked about the past, her memories, it was her voice. She said the ISI (the Inter-Services Intelligence) had let her come here. She wanted to get away, to go back to Afghanistan where she said the Taliban would protect her. She said that since her arrest, she knew nothing of her children. Someone told her they had been sent to Australia.”

More questions. If Siddiqui was a “ghost prisoner” in Afghanistan, how come she turned up at Dr Faruqi’s home in Islamabad? Why would she wear an Afghan “burqa” in the cosmopolitan capital of her own country? Why did she not talk more about her children? Why could she not show her face to her own uncle? Did she really come to Islamabad?

Fauzia Siddiqui is now touring Pakistan to publicise her sister’s “unfair” trial, her torture at the hands of Americans. Most of the Pakistan press have taken up her story with little critical attention to the allegations against her. She has become a proto-martyr, a martyr-in-being; if her story is comprehensible, it requires a willing suspension of disbelief. But America’s constant protestations of ignorance about her whereabouts before 2008 have an unhappy ring about them.

And the children? Rarely written about in Pakistan, they, too, in a sense, were “disappeared” from the story – until the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, paid an uneasy visit to Pakistan this week and, according to Fauzia, told the Interior minister, Rehman Malik, that “the children of Aafia Siddiqui will be sent home soon”. Was Karzai referring to the other two children? Or to all three, including the “real” Ahmed? And if Aafia’s two/three children are in Afghanistan, where have they been kept? In an orphanage? In a prison? And who kept them? The Afghans? The Americans?

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ISLAMABAD: Supreme Court (SC) has ordered to put behind bars the Chairman of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Naveed Ahsan and acting Chairman Irfan Nadeem, Geo News reported Tuesday.

The six-member SC bench headed by the Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Muhammed Chaudhry heard the Court Contempt notices against the NAB, Interior Ministry, the FIA and high-ups of Establishment Division for not implementing the SC’s NRO verdict.

The court also slammed the Swiss cases record’s being kept at Pakistan’s High Commission in London and said in its remarks that the matter relating the President’s immunity could be scrutinized if put before the court.

The NAB counsel Abid Zuberi told the court that Swiss cases record has been taken from the Pakistani High Commission, adding the record is sealed.

Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday wondered who would be responsible if the record is mishandled at the High Commission, adding this is the record which is under the custody of the criminals.

NAB chairman Naveed said the issue of President’s immunity is stumbling block in the matter relating Swiss cases. The CJ responded that if somebody faces problem over the issue, he would contact the court; addressing the NAB top official not to advocate it for nothing, as he (the President) did not claim the immunity.

The CJ Chaudhry told the NAB official that he will remain jailed until the NRO verdict is materialized.

Justice Chadhry Ijaz bristled in his remarks that the Executive is above the court’s verdict stemming its implementation.

NAB chief said he was on leave from March 9th in the wake of court verdict on the NRO.

Ahsan said he unconditionally apologizes to the Court, arguing that he was under wrong impression with regard to presidential immunity. The Chief Justice reprimanded Chairman Nab, saying that if someone has any thing to claim regarding immunity, he or she should come to the court to claim it, and that how could Chairman NAB decide on this matter on his own.

The CJ said if he does not send the responsible persons to the jail then he himself would fail his duties.

Though, the Swiss cases were not opened; but, the 60 million dollars of the country were searched for, he interrogated.

Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Muhammed Chaudhry addressed the NAB chief, ‘You had 80 days; but, you didn’t take any action before going on vacations. The Court gave you one-day notice tomorrow. Now, we are sending you to jail on one-day notice, as you are the responsible for no implementation.’

‘You will stay in jail until the SC’s verdict on National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) is implemented; the NAB wasted over three months,’ the court scolded.

The CJ Chaudhry told Ahsan that he is being sent to Adiala Jail on contempt of court and the court would see about if the government shows up for his rescue.