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Gunman in Orlando Pledged Allegiance to ISIS Before Attack

Umar Mateen (Credit: fox5sandiego.com)
Umar Mateen
(Credit: fox5sandiego.com)

ORLANDO, Fla. — A gunman who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State opened fire in a crowded gay nightclub here early Sunday in a shooting that left 50 dead and another 53 wounded. The gunman, identified as Omar Mateen, had been investigated twice by the F.B.I. for possible connections to terrorism, the bureau said, but no ties could be confirmed.

Mr. Mateen, 29, an American citizen whose parents were from Afghanistan, called 911 and talked about the Islamic State at the time of the massacre at the Pulse nightclub, the worst mass shooting in American history, Ronald Hopper, an assistant agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Tampa Division, said at a news conference. Other federal officials said more explicitly that he had declared allegiance to the group.

“The F.B.I. first became aware of him in 2013 when he made inflammatory comments to co-workers alleging possible terrorist ties,” but could not find any incriminating evidence, Agent Hopper said.

Law enforcement officials said the suspect in the attack on an Orlando nightclub on Sunday had been monitored for possible terrorist ties, but was still legally able to buy guns.

In 2014, the bureau investigated Mr. Mateen again, for possible ties to Moner Mohammad Abusalha, an American who grew up in Florida but went to Syria to fight for an extremist group and detonated a suicide bomb. Agent Hopper said the bureau concluded that the contact between the two men had been minimal, and that Mr. Mateen “did not constitute a substantive threat at that time.”

The suspicions did not prevent Mr. Mateen, who lived in Fort Pierce, Fla., from working as a security guard, or from buying guns. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Mr. Mateen legally bought a long gun and a pistol in the last week or two, though it was not clear whether those were the weapons used in the assault.

The gunman stormed the Pulse nightclub armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle and a handgun around 2 a.m., turning what had been a celebratory night of dancing to salsa and merengue music into a panicked scene of unimaginable slaughter, the floors slicked with blood, the dead and the injured piled atop one another.

Terrified people poured onto the darkened streets of the surrounding neighborhood, some carrying wounded and bleeding victims to safety; police vehicles were pressed into service as makeshift ambulances; and hundreds of people gathered at hospitals and on the fringes of the law enforcement cordon around the nightclub, hoping for some word on the fate of their relatives and friends.

“I saw bodies on the floor, people on the floor everywhere; it was a chaos, everybody trying to get out,” said Ray Rivera, a D.J. at the club who was playing reggae music on the patio area while Latin music played inside the building, when the shooting began. “I heard shots, so I lower the volume of the music to hear better because I wasn’t sure of what I just heard. I thought it was firecrackers, then I realized that someone is shooting at people in the club.”

Joel Figueroa and his friends “were dancing by the hip-hop area when I heard shots, bam, bam, bam, and the only thing I could think of was to duck, but I ran out instead,” he said. “Everybody was screaming and running toward the front door. I didn’t get to see the shooter.”

Some people who were trapped inside hid where they could, calling 911 or posting to social media, pleading for help. The club itself posted a stark message on its Facebook page: “Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.”

A three-hour standoff followed the initial assault, with people inside effectively held hostage until about 5 a.m., when law enforcement agencies led by a SWAT team raided the club in force, using armored vehicles and explosives designed to disorient and distract.

Hours after the attack, the Islamic State claimed responsibility in a statement released over an encrypted phone app used by the group. It stated that the attack “was carried out by an Islamic State fighter,” according to a transcript provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist propaganda.

But officials cautioned that even if Mr. Mateen, who court records show was born in New York and had been married and divorced, had been inspired by the group, there was no indication that it had trained or instructed him, or had any direct connection with him. The pair who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in December also proclaimed allegiance to the Islamic State, but investigators do not believe they had any contact with the group.

“The F.B.I. is appropriately investigating this as an act of terror,” President Obama said from the White House. He said that the gunman clearly had been ”filled with hatred” and that investigators were seeking to determine any ties to overseas terrorist groups.

“In the face of hate and violence, we will love one another,” he said. “We will not give in to fear or turn against each other. Instead, we will stand united as Americans to protect our people and defend our nation, and to take action against those who threaten us.”

As he had after previous mass shootings, the president said the shooting demonstrated again the need for what he called “common sense” gun measures.

“This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school or a house of worship or a movie theater or a nightclub,” Mr. Obama said. “We have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be. To actively do nothing is a decision as well.”

The shooting was the worst terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001, and the deadliest attack in the nation’s history on a specifically gay gathering. The F.B.I. set up a hotline for tips.

Law enforcement officials increased security at gay pride events and gay landmarks in cities around the country, including Washington, New York and Chicago. Officials in Santa Monica, Calif., on Sunday confirmed the arrest of a heavily armed man who said he was in the area for West Hollywood’s gay pride parade. The authorities, however, said they did not know of any connection between the arrest and the Orlando shooting.

Some terrorist attacks, like the San Bernardino killings in December, have been carried out in the name of Islam by people, some of them born and raised in the West, who were “self-radicalized.”

The Islamic State in particular has encouraged “lone wolf” attacks in the West, a point reinforced recently by a spokesman for the group, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, in his annual speech just before the holy month of Ramadan. In past years, the Islamic State and Al Qaeda ramped up attacks during Ramadan.

“Make it, Allah permitting, a month of hurt on the infidels everywhere,” Mr. Adnani said, according to a translation provided by the SITE Intelligence Group. Noting that some supporters have lamented that they cannot strike at military targets, he took pains to explain why killing civilians in the land of the infidel is not just permitted but encouraged.

Rasha Mubarak, the Orlando regional coordinator of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, released a statement saying: “We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured. The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence.”

The toll of the dead and injured far exceeded those of the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech, where 32 people were killed, and the 2012 shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., where 26 people were killed.

The club posted a message on its Facebook page about 3 a.m.: “Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.”

The Gay Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center of Central Florida said it was offering grief counseling to victims and survivors.

Officials at Orlando Regional Medical Center asked members of the families of victims and missing people to gather at the north entrance, where they would be escorted inside.

The slaughter at Pulse occurred a day after the singer Christina Grimmie, a star of YouTube and the reality TV show “The Voice,” was shot down after a concert in Orlando. The police said she had been killed by a St. Petersburg, Fla., man who drove to Orlando with the specific intention to kill Ms. Grimmie. The man, Kevin James Loibl, killed himself moments later.

Chief Mina said Mr. Loibl had traveled to Orlando with two handguns, several loaded magazines and a hunting knife. Police officials were examining his telephone and computer to try to determine a motive.

Lizette Alvarez reported from Orlando, and Richard Pérez-Peña from New York. Reporting was contributed by Wendy Thompson and Les Neuhaus from Orlando; Alan Blinder in Fort Pierce, Fla.; Rukmini Callimachi from Paris; Eric Lichtblau and Eric Schmitt from Washington; and Steve Kenny, Richard A. Oppel Jr., Rick Rojas and Daniel Victor from New York

 

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Could a Muslim Judge Be Donald Trump Neutral? Trump Thinks Not

Trump interview (Credit: lawnewz.com)
Trump interview
(Credit: lawnewz.com)

Donald J. Trump said Sunday that a Muslim judge might have trouble remaining neutral in a lawsuit against him, extending his race-based criticism of the jurist overseeing the case to include religion and opening another path for Democrats who have criticized him sharply for his remarks.

The comments, in an interview with John Dickerson, the host of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” come amid growing disapproval from fellow Republicans over his attacks on Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, a federal judge in California overseeing a suit against the defunct Trump University, whose impartiality Mr. Trump questioned based on the judge’s Mexican heritage.

And they came as Republicans, concerned about how his remarks could harm their ability to retain control of the United States Senate and have a detrimental effect in races further down the ballot, continue to grapple with how to distance themselves from Mr. Trump’s rhetoric without alienating his die-hard voters.

Mr. Trump has called Judge Curiel, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, a “Mexican” and said he has a “conflict of interest” in the case because of Mr. Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico. The case that Judge Curiel is overseeing is a class-action suit in which students of the for-profit operation say they were defrauded.

Mr. Dickerson asked Mr. Trump if, in his view, a Muslim judge would be similarly biased because of the Republican presumptive nominee’s call for a ban on Muslim immigrants. “It’s possible, yes,” Mr. Trump said. “Yeah. That would be possible. Absolutely.”

When Mr. Dickerson noted that there is a tradition in the United States, a nation of immigrants, against judging people based on their heritage, Mr. Trump replied: “I’m not talking about tradition. I’m talking about common sense, O.K.?”

At a recent rally in San Diego, where the suit is being heard, Mr. Trump engaged in a minutes-long attack on Judge Curiel over the suit, which cuts at the heart of the candidate’s appeal to voters as a successful businessman.

With Mr. Dickerson and, in a separate interview, with Jake Tapper of CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mr. Trump repeated not only the criticisms of Judge Curiel, but he intensified them.

“He is a member of a club or society, very strongly pro-Mexican, which is all fine,” Mr. Trump said. “But I say he’s got bias. I want to build a wall. I’m going to build a wall. I’m doing very well with the Latinos, with the Hispanics, with the Mexicans, I’m doing very well with them, in my opinion.”

The candidate’s broadside against Judge Curiel was one of the most overtly racial remarks he has made in the presidential race, and it has been roundly criticized by prominent Republicans. It also came after Mr. Trump delivered a stinging rebuke to Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico, the head of the Republican Governors Association and a star within her party, after she declined to appear with him at an event in her state.

The remarks exacerbated the tension that Republicans face in embracing their nominee. White, older, working-class voters comprise a large chunk of the party’s base, and Republicans need to keep the presidential campaign close in order to hold their Senate majority. But Mr. Trump has offended wide swaths of voters to whom the party must appeal amid shifts in national demographics.

The result has left Republicans to mitigate the damage by rejecting Mr. Trump’s language in one moment, but embracing his candidacy the next. An example last week was Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who endorsed Mr. Trump with lukewarm praise after declining to back him when he became the presumptive nominee. A day later, Mr. Ryan was forced to respond to Mr. Trump’s condemnation of Judge Curiel’s impartiality; Mr. Ryan rejected Mr. Trump’s comments.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, did not directly answer a question about whether the remark was racist, but said he completely disagreed with it. “All of us came here from somewhere else,” Mr. McConnell said in reference to Judge Curiel’s heritage. “That’s an important part of what makes America work.”

Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, a Republican who had been floated as a potential vice-presidential nominee alongside Mr. Trump, said on ABC News’ “This Week” of Mr. Trump’s behavior, “I think that he’s going to have to change.” And Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker who has been among Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporters, called the remarks “inexcusable” on “Fox News Sunday.”

“This is one of the worst mistakes Trump has made,” said Mr. Gingrich, who has also been mentioned as a potential vice-presidential candidate.

But none of the three men rejected Mr. Trump’s candidacy outright. Mr. Gingrich praised Mr. Trump moments later as a quick learner. Mr. Corker suggested that Mr. Trump “has an opportunity to really change the trajectory of our country, and it’s my sense that he will take advantage of that.”

In the weeks since he vanquished his remaining two primary opponents, Mr. Trump has repeatedly turned the campaign’s focus inward — about his businesses, the Trump University lawsuit, his fights with other Republicans — and obscured hopes Republicans had of keeping a spotlight on Hillary Clinton and her email controversy or on a jobs report suggesting a slowing of the economy.

Mr. McConnell, who quickly endorsed Mr. Trump after he became the presumptive nominee in early May, has been vocal about his concern that the remarks about Hispanics will have historic implications, along the lines of those that Barry Goldwater had on the party’s ability to woo black voters after he declined to support the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Mr. McConnell argued that the alternative to Mr. Trump — a second Clinton presidency — was worse. But he also urged Mr. Trump to stop focusing on the recent past and look to the future.

“This is a good time, it seems to me, to begin to try to unify the party,” Mr. McConnell said. “And you unify the party by not settling scores and grudges against people you’ve been competing with. We’re all behind him now. And I’d like to see him reach out and pull us all together and give us a real shot at winning this November.”

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Sadiq Khan: ‘Ruthless? No. Decency can get you to the top in politics’

London Mayor Sadiq Khan (Credit: edienet)
London Mayor Sadiq Khan
(Credit: edienet)

Sadiq Khan asks to meet in the Lahore Kahari, his local curry house, in Tooting. I haven’t eaten all morning – don’t want to spoil my appetite. Khan walks in, shakes my hand tightly, sits down and starts talking 10 to the dozen. It’s only a couple of weeks since the election, and he says he’s in the final stage of grief: acceptance. But it’s still painful. “It’s quite upsetting … ” he exhales loudly. “Thoroughly depressing. I was inconsolable.” He apologises for the speed of his delivery. “Two things you know when you’re a Khan: speak fast or you’re not heard, and eat fast or you don’t eat.” I make a mental note to get in quick with the food.

Khan, 44, is one of eight siblings (seven of them boys) born to a bus driver father and housewife-seamstress mother. He grew up in this part of south London, and still lives around here, as does his mother (his father died in 2003) and the rest of his family. He points out of the window to the mosque across the road – his local. The Henry Prince council estate where he grew up is a bus-ride away in Wandsworth; the house his parents later bought is a short walk, and he now lives 10 minutes away with his lawyer wife Saadiya and their two daughters. As local MPs go, you don’t get much more local than Sadiq Khan.

 

Former shadow justice secretary discusses Labour’s ‘rose tinted glasses’ about Blair era, claiming some in the party are looking back too favourably on the past

 

It’s a fascinating geo-history, but my mouth is watering. “Do you fancy some food?” I say. He looks surprised. “Well, let’s see how we get on.” So we carry on talking, not so much as a poppadom and glass of water between us. I’m beginning to understand why we’re here. Khan, the consummate politician, never misses a photo opportunity – this is Sadiq in his manor.

He asks where I’m from. Manchester, I say. He grins. “Come down here, take our jobs, take our women, bloody immigrants!” Khan could have been created by screenwriter David Simon – say, the successor to Tommy Carcetti as mayor of Baltimore in The Wire. He is fast-walking and fast-talking, with steel behind the smile; a wheeler-dealer with an eye permanently on the prize. (And then the next one.)

As it happens, the MP for Tooting does now hope to be mayor – of London. First, he must see off fellow Labour hopefuls, then dispatch candidates from rival parties. Let’s just say he’s quietly confident; he already has the backing of Unite, the largest trade union, and the GMB.

Khan was one of Ed Miliband’s lieutenants, responsible for the general election campaign in London. “We did very well by the way,” he says. “We kept all 38 seats and won seven others.” So why did Labour get hammered? “There was a concern among those who aren’t poor about what we could do for them, I suspect.” Are the candidates for leadership of the Labour party strong enough? “Let’s wait and see,” he says non-committally. Look me in the eye, I say. He does, but still doesn’t answer with any more conviction. “It’s too early to tell. I’ve got no horse in the race.”

The one thing he won’t do is rubbish Miliband’s legacy. Too many of his colleagues are already doing that, he says, looking back on the Blair years “with rose-tinted glasses”.

“A word I think you’ll hear overused in the leadership contest is ‘aspiration’. It’s used in a pejorative way to suggest we didn’t understand what it meant. I understand what it means. It means your dad working all the overtime hours that London Transport will give you, aspiration means your mum, notwithstanding having eight children, works as a seamstress at home as well to make ends meet. Aspiration means, as a 24-year-old trainee solicitor, sleeping on a bunk bed in your mum and dad’s home to save for a deposit. So I get aspiration.” This is classic Khan – defending Labour while promoting his ability to lead London in the same breath.

During the election campaign, Khan warned Labour MPs who had already announced they were standing for mayor not to put personal ambition before the party. Within a week of Labour losing the election, he stood down as shadow justice minister and shadow minister for London, and announced his bid for the mayor. By his own logic, surely Labour need him in the shadow cabinet? “Yeah, it was a tough one.” Did his daughters, aged 15 and 13, think he should go for the leadership or mayor? “Mayor. Maybe children are smarter than you think, and they saw I’d have much more fun as mayor of London. I’d be able to do what I want to, whereas being leader of the opposition is a far tougher proposition.” It’s a surprising answer – not least because he insists he does not want to be a “red-carpet mayor like Boris”. In the end, he says, it goes back to what London has done for his family, and what he’d like to see it do for future generations.

He loves to tell the story of the bus driver’s son made good; the boy who learned to box to look after himself on a tough estate (two of his brothers became amateur champions), who went on to captain the school’s cricket team and had trials for Surrey, who became a human rights lawyer representing victims of police abuse, and who sacrificed a brilliant legal career to serve his people. It is an inspirational story. And like all good lawyers, he retains the ability to tell it his way, always the master of his own narrative.

Khan began his legal career working with eminent human rights lawyer Louise Christian as a trainee in 1994, when she was in partnership with Mike Fisher. They made Khan a partner in 1997. Five years later Fisher left and the company was renamed Christian Khan. But when Khan was selected as Labour candidate for Tooting in 2004 he quit without notice.

“I walked away from the business. I wasn’t paid out because I wanted to be a full-time politician. It’s never been about money for me, so Louise took over the firm and I became an MP.” It was a brave decision – Khan had no salary for six months while campaigning. But it is also a selective interpretation of events.

I later hear that Khan hired lawyers threatening Christian with legal action unless he was compensated for his share of the company – and that only after Christian suggested a counter-claim (because she and his clients had been left in the lurch by him) did he drop the matter. I ring Khan to ask if it is true. He says he doesn’t know about a counter-claim, but yes, he did threaten legal action. “I was concerned about my tax liability, but ended up taking that on the chin. And strictly speaking, I was entitled to half the firm, and my lawyer advised me to pursue everything I was entitled to. In the end, I decided not to because I wanted to get on with my political career.” Khan admits that he and Christian have not talked since he left the firm.

Christian had been his mentor, and hoped he would one day take over the practice. Does he regret the way things ended? “Yeaaaah,” he says, weighing his words carefully. “But you’ve got to move forward. In my next venture, where I’m mayor of London, I can’t be looking backwards to my 10 years as an MP. You’ve got to move forward.”

As chair of the human rights pressure group Liberty in the early noughties, Khan campaigned against imprisonment without trial, then in 2005 as a new MP voted against Labour’s proposal to hold terrorism suspects for 90 days without charge. “When I first got elected, everyone said, ‘Sadiq’s a rising star, he’s going to go all the way.’ But Blair wanted to pass 90 days, and you’ve got a choice: do you hold true to your beliefs and speak out against it? And I did. It was the first ever defeat Blair had.” Did it make an enemy of Blair? “Oh my God, yeah! There were some people who never forgave me. I was threatened.” How? “That ‘you’re finished as an MP, you’ve got no chance now’. Whips said that, other MPs said that.”

Yet, three years later Khan was the whip responsible for pushing 42-day detention without charge through the Commons. What would the Khan who chaired Liberty make of Khan the politician? “The thing you’ve got to remember is, it’s a different role you’re performing. As the chair of Liberty, your job is to to put pressure on governments of whatever colour, right?” Ultimately, he says, you’ll get nowhere as a politician unless you compromise. “You’ve got to think: do you want to be a megaphone politician or do you want to get things done? ”

Khan has always had a reputation in politics – as he did in law – for getting things done. Do you have to be ruthless to succeed? “Ruthless? No. Decency can get to the top in politics.”

There seems an element of ruthlessness in going from challenging detention without charge to championing it, I say. “No,” he protests, “it’s not about you. It’s about who you did it for. So, when I’m a lawyer, I’m doing it for my client – he or she is the most important person, not me. When I’m a member of parliament, constituents are the most important people. When I’m chair of Liberty, our members are the most important people. And when you’re mayor of London, London is the most important thing. So you’ll be ruthless for your clients, ruthless for your constituents, ruthless for London, without necessarily being ruthless as a person.” You sense that whatever job he does, Khan will always see himself as a lawyer – the eternal advocate.

David, the photographer, arrives. “Your job is to make me look really really good,” Khan tells him, running his hand through his hair. “Clooneyesque is the job spec.” He laughs. “Yes, Clooneyesque.” Is it true he likes to think of himself as “cool and metrosexual”? “This is interesting, you see. When I see my children’s friends’ parents, right, I look at myself and say to my girls, ‘Come on, you’ve got a cool dad, surely?’, but they say, ‘no Dad, you’re not cool.’ They say my taste in music is not cool.” What does he like? “Jay-Z, Paul Weller, Sting.” What else do his girls say about him? “They say I’m a smart Alec because I like to have the last word.”

David suggests, as we’re in the curry house, it would be nice to take pictures of him eating. This time, Khan is more keen. He speaks in Urdu to the manager, Rizwan, and asks him to order for us.

“How spicy do you like it?” Rizwan asks.

“Not very spicy,” Khan answers for me. “He lives in north London! The article will be as good or bad as the food – so make it good!”

I ask Khan why he would make the best mayor, and suddenly it feels like I’m interviewing him for the job. “I went to a good local state school, had an affordable university education, one of my brothers had an apprenticeship, council accommodation. Today’s Londoners don’t have the same opportunities we had, and it breaks my heart. But being disappointed about it is not enough. I want to do something about it. And I’ve got the experience – I ran a successful business before becoming a politician, lawyer for more than 10 years, big jobs in government, I understand what makes London tick, I’ve got ideas whether it’s housing or helping businesses or reducing inequality or the living wage.” He’s talking faster and faster. “Also, I want to get things done. I’m not doing it because it’s just a reward for long service or because I couldn’t hack it in politics or in law. It’s because I’ve genuinely got something to offer.”

David suggests a picture of Khan tucking into a poppadom. He looks appalled. “Don’t even try that. Listen, it’s got to be proper food. Not a poppadom. There’s an urdu word, gora, which means white. So you guys are gora. The joke would be, ‘that’s gora food’.”

But back to pitching for mayor. “First of all, we need a candidate who’s going to win. So, I’m the only candidate who’s fought and won a marginal seat. On every occasion my share of the vote has gone up. I was in charge of the 2014 London elections; not only did we keep all 15 councils we won another five. We had the best ever European election results in 2014.”

Dish after dish arrives – fish massala, chicken methi, seekh kebab, lamb karahi – the smell is overpowering, the taste heavenly. But Khan doesn’t seem interested. David asks if he could stop talking for a second. Khan smiles at the waiters. “Well, he can make me look Clooneyesque or make me look like Ed eating a bacon sandwich, so I’ve got to be nice to him.” And then back to me. “The reason we won the most seats in the European election was because we did well in inner London and outer London, so I get the science and the art of winning elections. I’m a winner. So if we want a candidate who will win the election in May, I think that’s me.”

Are you not going to eat, I ask. No time, he says – a mayoral candidate’s work is never done. His assistant tells him they had better be on their way. I’m staring at all the dishes in front of me; Khan wraps a kebab in a serviette and prepares to head off. I ask him if it’s true he does standup comedy. Only at Labour party functions, he says. “At my last gig, I met Windsor Davies from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum. He said I was very funny. Arthur Smith says I’d be a very decent standup comic.” What’s his best joke?

“I went to hospital last week to meet the surgeons. I said: ‘What’s the easiest form of people to operate on? Surgeon One says: ‘The easiest form of people to operate on are accountants, because you slice them open and all their parts are numbered.’ Second surgeon goes: ‘No, actually you’re wrong, the easiest people to operate on are librarians because you cut them open and all their parts are in alphabetical order.’ Third surgeon goes: ‘No, you’re both wrong. The easiest people to operate on are politicians.’ I said: ‘Why?’ He goes: ‘Well, last week we had Jeremy Hunt in here and we sliced him open, and he was headless, heartless and gutless and his head and arse were interchangeable.’ Thank you. We’ve gotta go.”

 

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An off-shoot of Al Qaeda is Regrouping in Pakistan

KARACHI, Pakistan — Five years after most senior al-Qaeda leaders are thought to have fled this port city, officials in Karachi worry that the organization is regrouping and finding new support here and in neighboring Afghanistan. They are especially concerned about the recruitment of potential foot soldiers for the next major terrorist attack.

The resurgence has been managed by a South Asian offshoot called al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), created by al-Qaeda’s top leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in 2014 in order to slow advances by rival Islamic State militants in the region.

Initially, AQIS struggled to gain traction in Pakistan — it has been the principal target of President Obama’s drone-strike strategy in the country’s northwestern tribal belt. But AQIS is now finding its footing in southern Pakistan, powered by fresh recruits and budding alliances with other militant organizations.

“They are making a comeback of sorts,” said Saifullah Mehsud, executive director of the FATA Research Center, which monitors militant groups. “But it’s a different, more localized al-Qaeda.”

After the fall of Afghanistan’s Taliban government in 2001, many al-Qaeda leaders spilled into northwest Pakistan or attempted to blend in in Karachi, a bustling city of more than 20 million residents. A significant number of those core leaders were eventually killed or captured, or fled to the Middle East, officials said.

But the formation of AQIS is again allowing al-Qaeda to tap into Karachi’s wealth and network of madrassas in search of recruits and technical expertise — and sparking deadly clashes with Pakistani security forces.

“The core al-Qaeda, the thinkers and planners, are not coming to the front right now, but they are giving directions, and . . . the local boys are going in big numbers,” said one counterterrorism official in Karachi who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

While Pakistani officials remain confident that al-Qaeda probably can’t pull off another 9/11-style attack on the United States, there is concern that the group is, as one official put it, “planning something big.” The official added that it is unclear, however, whether such an attack would be aimed at Pakistan, another country in South Asia or the West.

Those concerns mirror assessments from U.S. commanders in Afghanistan, where there are also signs that elements of al-Qaeda are trying to come together. A 30-square-mile training camp was discovered in Kandahar province in October, and last month U.S. and Afghan special operations forces freed a kidnapped Pakistani from an al-Qaeda-linked camp in Paktia province.

“They are looking to nestle in with the Taliban so they have some level of sanctuary,” said Brig. Gen. Charles H. Cleveland, chief spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. “Ultimately, what we think al-Qaeda gets out of this relationship is, if the Taliban can provide them some ungoverned space, that allows al-Qaeda space to really conduct their global operations.”

In Pakistan, officials say al-Qaeda is also re-adapting through enhanced alliances with established militant groups, including the Sunni-dominated Pakistani Taliban and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a sectarian group that had been focused on attacking Shiite Muslims.

The coordination comes as Pakistan’s military has stepped up its operations against various militant groups, prompting them to seek out support from al-Qaeda “for survival,” said one Pakistani law enforcement official who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.

But officials say that the threat from al-Qaeda extends far beyond Sunni militant groups rebranding themselves. Instead, they say, al-Qaeda is finding new recruits from some unlikely Karachi neighborhoods.

Although ethnic Pashtuns and foreign fighters have historically formed the backbone of al-Qaeda in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, some ethnic Bengalis and other Urdu-speaking Mohajirs — Muslims who migrated to Pakistan from India after the 1947 partition — are also being lured into the group, officials said.

“They are not into this factional fighting, or fighting with other sects or Shiites, but they will go for enforcement of sharia law overall” and be drawn to al-Qaeda sermons against the West, the official said.

Counterterrorism officials in Karachi have a list of several hundred active al-Qaeda members, which makes them assume there are at least a few thousand on the streets.

In Karachi, AQIS has divided itself into three operational segments — recruitment, financial and tactical — made up of four-to-six-person cells.

The recruitment cells work in madrassas and schools, casually preaching Islam before targeting certain students for potential recruitment, officials said.

“Nobody may even know it’s al-Qaeda operating,” said Saad Khan, a retired Pakistani intelligence officer.

Cells solicit local businesses for donations, often under the guise of supporting Islamic charities, officials said. Officials have no estimates for how much money al-Qaeda raises from relatively wealthy Karachi but said that militants are often found carrying hundreds of dollars in cash.

“They are being told they don’t need to do any job and they don’t need to indulge in petty crimes,” the counterterrorism official said. “But they are told they have to remain very discreet.”

Although such discretion complicates the work of counterterrorism officials, they think that the Karachi cells are just spokes in a broader operation centered near Pakistan’s southwestern border with Afghanistan or Iran.

From Karachi, AQIS tactical cells ferry money and messages to that general area, often moving through Quetta, which is also where part of the Afghan Taliban leadership resides, officials said. From Quetta, militants cross the border into Afghanistan but appear to have little knowledge about al-Qaeda’s broader ambitions or tactics in the region, intelligence officials said.

“The people we come into contact with say they go to Afghanistan but are put into a small corner and remain there and can’t go out,” the Pakistani counterterrorism official said. “Then they get direction from there, from another Pakistani, and return.”

In Pakistan, officials said AQIS has been linked to just one major attempted terrorist attack — an effort two years ago to hijack a Pakistani navy vessel from the port of Karachi.

The attack was foiled, but five Pakistani navy officers were convicted of helping to orchestrate the operation, according to media reports.

AQIS militants have also been linked to several recent police killings in Karachi. Officials say they are targeted revenge attacks or the early stages of a larger plot to try to weaken the morale of security forces.

“What still makes al-Qaeda different and more dangerous from other militant groups is a disciplined management system,” said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Peshawar-based expert on militants. “Another dangerous thing is they are always looking to penetrate into the armed forces looking for sympathy.”

U.S. intelligence officials have worried for years about potential links between al-Qaeda and rogue Pakistani military officials. That Osama bin Laden was found hiding near a Pakistan military training academy did little to allay their suspicions.

Pakistani security and intelligence agencies, however, seem to have no tolerance for the modern-day al-Qaeda. “We don’t go for arrests,” the counterterrorism official said. “We just search through their computer, their things, and then neutralize them.”

Last month, police in Pakistan’s Punjab province reported killing 14 al-Qaeda militants, including the group’s leader there, over two days in “encounters” with police. Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported that the suspects had been in police custody for four months before they died.

Saad Muhammad, a retired Pakistani general, said Pakistan’s military is determined not to allow AQIS to jeopardize its recent gains against Islamist militant groups.

“You can’t say they will be totally naked, but they will not be able to gain strength in any significant way,” Muhammad said.

But Syed Tahir Hussain Mashhadi, a retired Pakistani army colonel and sitting senator, said the real concern remains how a city such as Karachi fits into al-Qaeda’s broader global ambitions. The answer to that, he said, remains murky.

“Al-Qaeda is just an umbrella, and the top of the pyramid is what is controlling and enduring,” he said. “They don’t have to put much effort into Pakistan because all they have to do is pick up all these existing, bloodthirsty splinter organizations and they have a ready-made killing machine.”

Nisar Mehdi in Karachi, Aamir Iqbal in Peshawar and Antonio Olivo in Kabul contributed to this report.

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How the US Tracked and Killed the Leader of the Taliban

Mansour vehicle (Credit: wsj.com)
Mansour vehicle
(Credit: wsj.com)
U.S. spy agencies zeroed in on Mullah Akhtar Mansour while he was visiting his family in Iran, laying a trap for when the Taliban leader crossed the border back into Pakistan.

While U.S. surveillance drones don’t operate in the area, intercepted communications and other types of intelligence allowed the spy agencies to track their target as he crossed the frontier on Saturday, got into a white Toyota Corolla and made his way by road through Pakistan’s Balochistan province, according to U.S. officials briefed on the operation.

Then, the U.S. military took over. Operators waited for the right moment to send armed drones across the Afghan border to “fix” on the car and made sure no other vehicles were in the way so they could “finish” the target, the officials said, using the argot of drone killing—all before Mullah Mansour could reach the crowded city of Quetta, where a strike would have been more complicated.

The ambush that killed Mullah Mansour marked a critical moment in Obama administration policy on Afghanistan, as it weighed a push for peace talks and a potential need for a military escalation. It also represented a message to Pakistan that the U.S. would take action on Pakistani soil if necessary without advance warning.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, warned on Tuesday that the strike would have “serious implications” for relations with the U.S. and described the incident as “completely against the U.N. Charter and international law.”

President Barack Obama secretly ordered the strike on Mullah Mansour after first trying to bring him to the negotiating table. Initially, there was hope in Washington that Mullah Mansour would be more open to negotiations than his predecessor, Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Obama administration officials were divided over whether the Pakistanis were capable or willing to deliver Mullah Mansour for the negotiations.

U.S. officials said the Pakistanis tried and grew frustrated in February by Mullah Mansour’s refusal to send representatives to meet with the Afghan government.

Around the same time, people who maintain contacts with the Taliban began to report that Mullah Mansour had left Pakistan and was spending time in Iran.

U.S. intelligence agencies received information that allowed them to track Mullah Mansour’s movements, including details about devices he used for communications, U.S. officials said.

That allowed the spy agencies to present policy makers with a choice: If and when Mullah Mansour were located in Pakistan, should the U.S. strike?

Mullah Mansour’s travels made it easier to find him. In contrast, the Central Intelligence Agency spent years looking in vain for an opportunity to kill the reclusive cleric he replaced, Mullah Omar.

An April 19 Taliban attack in Kabul targeted Afghanistan’s secret service, killing more than 60 people and underlining for the Americans the extent to which Mullah Mansour had chosen a military course. A decision was made that he should “face the consequences” of his refusal to negotiate, a senior administration official said.

The U.S. knew the route Mullah Mansour took to Quetta because he had taken it several times. U.S. intelligence agencies detected his preparations to cross the border back into Pakistan last week.

“Such actionable intelligence is rare,” another senior administration official said. “Given the preponderance of what has happened over the last few months, most principals around the table were going to be hard pressed to say: ‘Don’t take the shot.’”

Both the U.S. military and the CIA operate drones in the region. Military drones in Afghanistan rarely stray across the border, and CIA drones generally only go into Pakistan for strikes in what are known as Federally Administered Tribal Areas, according to U.S. officials. Pakistan facilitates the program by clearing the airspace there for CIA drones, while publicly opposing U.S. strikes in Pakistani territory, they said.

But Balochistan has long been off limits to the drones, U.S. and Pakistani officials say. So U.S. officials believe that Mullah Mansour and other Taliban leaders felt more comfortable there.

Route N-40, which Mullah Mansour and his driver used, cuts between Taftan on the Iranian border and Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, according to the U.S. officials.

The U.S. normally would want multiple drones to keep eyes on such an important target. Because CIA drones weren’t operating in the area, U.S. spy agencies relied on signals intelligence and other location information to track the Corolla’s journey, according to U.S. officials.

Armed drones based in Afghanistan and piloted by the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command were preparing to move in for the kill, the officials said.

The U.S. knew Pakistani radar could detect the intrusion. Pakistan might then scramble jet fighters to intercept the drones, so timing was critical.

The military’s Reaper drones crossed the border into Pakistani airspace, flying low over the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to exploit gaps in radar coverage, the officials said.

Officers in the U.S. military command center overseeing the operation held off briefly because the vehicle pulled over near unidentified buildings, the officials said. It’s not clear why the stop was made.

They waited until the car got back on the road and away from other vehicles and buildings. Then they launched the strike, and two Hellfire missiles took out Mullah Mansour, the officials said.

The drones hovered overhead to ensure there were no survivors, then headed back to Afghanistan, the officials said.

The U.S. government agencies involved in the operation agreed in advance that the strike would be disclosed publicly by the Pentagon once completed. The agreement also called for officials to be vague about identifying the location of the strike, and the Pentagon was instructed to announce that the strike took place along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. But U.S. officials soon disclosed the location inside Pakistan.

Pakistani officials said they weren’t notified by U.S. authorities until seven hours after the strike.

—Margherita Stancati, Saeed Shah, Gordon Lubold and Qasim Nauman contributed to this article.

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Projects like Bahria Town ‘are atom bombs for the poor’

Bahria town (Credit: twitter.com)
Bahria town
(Credit: twitter.com)
KARACHI, May 16: Towns such as Bahria coming up in the rural areas around the city will change the demographics of Karachi. They are a big game being played in the name of development; they bulldoze the rights of the indigenous people and are like atom bombs to wipe off the poor population of this country.

These were some of the views expressed by writers, historians, researchers and experts at a seminar, ‘Bahria Town: Development or Destruction’, organised by Save Sindh Committee at PMA House here on Monday.
“Malik Riaz did not own even an inch of land when announcing the Bahria Town project and yet he collected billions through bookings. The land came later thanks to some big bribes for politicians,” said historian and chronicler Gul Hasan Kalmati.

“Today, work is under way on 23,300 acres though the target is grabbing 43,000 acres of land for this project because already we can see activities beyond the boundaries where there are some eight to nine Goths, or villages. Actually, their activities affect 45 such villages as their animals can no longer graze inside the boundary, etc,” he explained the repercussions that, according to the expert, were only just the ‘tip of the iceberg’.

“It is obvious why the PPP and PML-N have turned a blind eye towards Bahria Town but why are the sardars quiet?” said Kalmati. “That is because they have also been bought. Ten per cent from Bahria Town goes directly into their pockets,” he answered his own question. “The sardars are so powerful that had they wanted, there would have been no Bahria Town.”

“There are some 30 projects around the Superhighway that have been on hold for years due to the issue of utilities such as water and power reaching there. But for Bahria Town everything has been arranged, like getting power by laying a cable from Gadap and water lines and boring water that was meant for agriculture, and for which even a company as big as Nestle was not allowed to operate from there, is now diverted towards the town,” Kalmati said.

Architect, development expert and town planner Arif Hasan said that the rural areas around Karachi were reserved for agriculture in the first plan of Karachi in 1953, something that was repeated in the 1958 plan and the 1989 plan for 2000. “Some work on this started, too, but then it stopped due to pressure from land-grabbers,” he said.

About all this land being developed for townships for the elite, Arif Hasan shared that 350,000 plots lay vacant in Karachi. “This is how the rich invest, by holding land. Phase eight in the DHA was started some 28 years ago and most of it still remains bare. Now we are told that two million people will live in DHA City and 3.5 million will live in Bahria Town. Will they all come and live there like they do in Phase eight of the DHA? Live there or not, they will own land there, of course,” the development expert explained.

“Malik Riaz was able to acquire the most land here. He also has projects in Lahore and Islamabad but some transparency still exists there to stop him from having his way,” he said.

Arif Hasan had a few suggestions that can stop such high profile land-grabbers from having their way such as not allowing anyone to own more than 500 yards, not giving loan for constructing a house to anyone twice and heavy fee or tax on non-utilisation of land. “But will our assemblies pass such laws?” he said.

Finally, Baloch leader and president of the Awami Workers Party Yousuf Masti Khan said that Sindh’s weakness lay in its feudals willing to do anything to remain powerful. “But we the middle class and the poor must struggle against such elements. Your land is your ‘mother’. Do not let go of it so easily. Guard it with your life,” he said.

“Make no mistake about it. This is investment, not development. Had it been development, we would have seen the building of schools and hospitals for the indigenous people of these areas. Instead they are being driven away. Bahria Town and others like it are atom bombs for wiping out the poor,” he said.

Writer and columnist Abdul Khaliq Junejo and researcher and journalist Fahim Zaman also spoke.

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Afghan Taliban leader in Pakistan likely killed in US drone strike

Mullah Akhtar Mansoor (Credit: Al Jazeera)
Mullah Akhtar Mansoor
(Credit: Al Jazeera)

WASHINGTON, May 21 (Reuters) – The United States conducted a drone strike on Saturday against the leader of Afghan Taliban, likely killing him on the Pakistan side of the remote border region with Afghanistan in a mission authorized by U.S. President Barack Obama, officials said.

The death of Mullah Akhtar Mansour, should it be confirmed, could further fracture the Taliban – an outcome that experts cautioned might make the insurgents even less likely to participate in long-stalled peace efforts.

The mission, which included multiple drones, demonstrated a clear willingness by Obama to go after the Afghan Taliban leadership in Pakistan now that the insurgents control or contest more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since being ousted by a U.S.-led intervention in 2001.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook confirmed an air strike targeting Mansour in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region but declined to speculate on his fate, although multiple U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters he likely was killed.

“We are still assessing the results of the strike and will provide more information as it becomes available,” Cook said.

A Taliban commander close to Mansour, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, denied Mansour was dead.

“We heard about these baseless reports but this not first time,” the commander said. “Just wanted to share with you my own information that Mullah Mansour has not been killed.”

In December, Mansour was reportedly wounded and possibly killed in a shootout at the house of another Taliban leader near Quetta in Pakistan.

Bruce Riedel, an Afghanistan expert at the Brookings Institution think-tank, described the U.S. operation in Pakistan as an unprecedented move but cautioned about possible fallout with Pakistan, where Taliban leadership has long been accused of having safe haven.

A State Department official said both Pakistan and Afghanistan were notified of the strike but did not disclose whether that notification was prior to it being carried out.

“The opportunity to conduct this operation to eliminate the threat that Mansour posed was a distinctive one and we acted on it,” the official said.

TROUBLED PEACE TALKS

The U.S. drones targeted Mansour and another combatant as the men rode in a vehicle in a remote area southwest of the town of Ahmad Wal, another U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

U.S. special operations forces operated the drones in a mission authorized by Obama that took place at about 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT), the official said. That would have placed it at Saturday at 3 p.m. in Pakistan.

Cook branded Mansour “an obstacle to peace and reconciliation between the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban” and said he was involved in planning attacks that threatened U.S., Afghan and allied forces.

Michael Kugelman, a senior associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center, said the strike was unlikely to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table any time soon.

“The Taliban won’t simply meekly agree to talks and especially as this strike could worsen the fragmentation within the organization,” he said.

Kugelman said the most important target for the United States remained the top leadership of the Haqqani network, which is allied with the Taliban.

Mansour had failed to win over rival factions within the Taliban after formally assuming the helm last year after the Taliban admitted the group’s founding leader, Mullah Omar, had been dead for more than two years.

It was unclear who Mansour’s successor might be.

“If Mansour is dead it will provoke a crisis inside the Taliban,” Riedel said.

U.S. Senator John McCain, the Republican head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he hoped the strike would herald a change in the Obama administration’s policy against more broadly targeting the Taliban.

The new U.S. commander in Afghanistan is currently reviewing U.S. strategy, including whether broader powers are needed to target insurgents and whether to proceed with plans to reduce the number of U.S. forces.

“Our troops are in Afghanistan today for the same reason they deployed there in 2001 – to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for global terrorists,” McCain said.

“The Taliban remains allied with these terrorists, including al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network, and it is the one force most able and willing to turn Afghanistan into a terrorist safe haven once again.”

(Additional reporting by James Mackenzie in Afghanistan and Drazen Jorgic in Pakistan; Editing by Bill Trott and David Gregorio)

 

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Indians demand government action after temperatures hit 51C

Heat in Indo Pak (Credit: guardian.co.uk)
Heat in Indo Pak
(Credit: guardian.co.uk)

Mumbai/Islamabad: Residents of a city in the north-west of India have called for government action as temperatures reached 51C (123.8F), the highest the country has experienced since records began.

Phalodi, in the desert state of Rajasthan, is suffering an unprecedented medical crisis as a result of the record temperatures, which are high even by local summer standards and which smashed the previous record, set in 1956, of 50.6C.

“[Thursday] was the hottest temperature ever recorded in the country: 51C in Phalodi,” BP Yadav, a director of India’s meteorological department, said on Friday.

In Phalodi, where the temperature can fall below zero in winter and reach extreme peaks in the summer, the local government hospital has seen patient numbers double in the last few days as people report more heat-related illnesses.

Shiv Prakash Chanda, who works as a nursing officer in the hospital, said: “It is incredibly hot. None of the air-conditioners or coolers are working. We have running water, but the water is stored in tanks on top the buildings, and when it comes out of the tap the water is so hot that you can’t even wash your hands with it. You can’t even go to the toilet.”

Ranjeet Singh, a local police constable, said: “The ground is so hot, you could cook chapatis on it.”

One man from the town died from heatstroke on Friday at a nearby railway station. Chanda said the heat was so extreme that the hospital was struggling to meet demand from patients. Children are particularly vulnerable to sunstroke, and the hospital has seen a rise in the number of cases of diarrhoea and vomiting.

“The government needs to do something – they need to put up tents and offer cold water in places like railway stations where people gather. The local administration has done nothing so far,” Chanda said. Last year, more than 1,500 people died in India because of heatwaves.

 

Ambitious scheme to channel water from regions with a surplus to drought-prone areas could begin in days, but Bangladesh has raised concerns.

Chanda has written a letter to the chief minister of the state urging the government to delay a national polio vaccination programme because of the temperature. “Going door todoor in this heat can be fatal,” he said. “The vaccines may be spoiled. Plus we need more people in the hospital here because so many people are coming in.”

The heat has disrupted the regular working day in Phalodi, where people say they are afraid to leave their homes. Residents start work at sunrise and come home at about 10am to protect themselves from the midday sun, before returning to work in the evenings.

However, the heatwave’s worst effects are not being felt as badly in the city – where residents know how to cope with the hot weather – as in the surrounding rural areas, where there is no infrastructure to protect people from the sun.

In a nearby village called Pratapgarh, Chanulal said the heat had devastated this year’s harvest. “The trees and saplings have all dried up,” he said. “We can’t even leave our homes. I am an old man, and I can’t do anything. I eat whatever my children bring home.”

There is no electricity in Pratapgarh and villagers have to walk miles to get drinking water. “There are no fridges or coolers here,” said Chanulal. “Only the wind – that’s your cooler.”

For the last few weeks, severe heatwaves have swept across India, and temperatures are expected to stay high in June. A devastating drought, which has left many villages and towns without a regular water supply is adding to the effects of the heat.

Schools have had to close down, and some hospitals have stopped performing surgeries. In some regions, cooking in the daytime has been banned because of the risk of starting fires.

Across the border, Pakistan is increasing its hospital capacity, digging more graves and consulting clerics about religious fasting guidelines as it, too, braces for another possible deadly heatwave.

Last year, more than 1,300 people died when temperatures soared to their highest summer levels in nearly 35 years.

Particularly badly affected was the southern province of Sindh and its capital, Karachi, which suffers from crumbling infrastructure and a punishing “heat island” effect in the most built-up areas.

In 2015, hospitals were overwhelmed by heat stroke victims, many of them labourers and slum dwellers, complaining of dehydration, stomach pains and low blood pressure. At one point, bodies were piling up so quickly authorities were forced to bury them before they could be identified by relatives.

This year, hospitals in the city have added extra beds and emergency response points have been set up on street corners.

In a perfect storm of problems, in 2015 the city was struck by record-breaking heat and power cuts caused by soaring demand for electricity. The power cuts were so bad that many people sought relief by sleeping outside in parks and on the city’s beaches.

The extreme temperatures struck in the middle of the fasting month of Ramadan when Muslims abstain from food and drink during daylight hours.

This year, provincial government officials have promised they will consult religious scholars about the possibility of publishing reminders that people can break their fast for health reasons.

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Nawaz suggests forming joint committee to probe Panama Leaks

Nawaz Sharif address to parliament (Credit: dawn.com)
Nawaz Sharif address to parliament
(Credit: dawn.com)
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, while addressing the National Assembly on Monday, suggested to form a joint committee to draft the terms of reference (ToRs) for establishing the judicial commission to probe allegations related to Panama Papers revelations.

The government lawmakers present in the NA welcomed the prime minister when he arrived to address the lower house over the Panama issue.

“A report was published in media in April, called Panama papers, which named a number of Pakistanis involved in forming offshore companies. My two sons were also named in it, who are living abroad and are doing legal business,” Nawaz said as he started his much-awaited speech.

“Some of my fellow party members advised me not to explain my position, since I am not directly named,” the premier told the lower house. “They advised me to form an impartial commission to investigate the issue.”

During the speech, members of the ruling party kept applauding every sentence said by the prime minster by thumping theirs desks.

“I believe in the judiciary and even the retired judges but some people reacted adversely and even defamed those judges, then they demanded an investigation by FIA,” the premier said.

The premier said that his government accepted their demand and nominated FIA officials trusted by the opposition, but even this proposal was rejected.

“Then they wanted a commission led by supreme judiciary, we agreed to that. But then they made the issue of ToRs controversial.”

“None shall have any doubt that the ToRs suggested by the opposition only want accountability for me. This is inexplicable that a man whose name is nowhere in Panama Papers should explain himself.”

“My ministers and I do not fear accountability, we have faced selective justice in the past as well,” he maintained.

The prime minister said he wants investigation against all kind of corrupt people and practices, including those who took kick-backs and got their loans written off.

“Today, people living in bungalows and commuting in helicopters are accusing me of misconduct, can they explain it before the nation as to how they earned all this money and how much tax they paid,” said Nawaz Sharif.

The opposition members, as decided in a meeting before the NA session, did not create any disturbance during the speech. However, they staged a walkout after the prime minister’s address saying “the prime minister’s address was of no use”.

During his speech Nawaz claimed that he will now clear the air about the London flats, but later did not offer any explanation.

‘An irresponsible move’

Addressing a press conference following the PM’s speech in NA session, PML-N ministers termed the opposition’s walkout “an irresponsible move”.

Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid claimed the walkout shows the opposition had nothing to say after the Nawaz’s speech in which he “knocked out all the lies”.

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said, “Imran Khan is the pioneer of offshore firms and is the most experienced Pakistani politician in this regard.”

“On one hand Imran urges foreigners to bring money to Pakistan, but on the other hand he even invests charity money abroad,” claimed Asif.

Railway Minister Saad Rafique, on his turn, accused the opposition of behaving ‘irresponsibly’ by walking out even after their demand of a PM’s speech was granted.

He claimed that the Speaker of the house had agreed to grant more time to Opposition Leader Khursheed Shah and even Imran Khan after PM’ speech, but they still staged a walkout.

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Imran Khan on the Panama Papers: ‘The coalition of the corrupt help each other’

IK in London (Credit: guardian.com)
IK in London
(Credit: guardian.com)
‘He is caught,” says Imran Khan, leaning back in his armchair with the quiet satisfaction of a man who believes his biggest political rival has been found with his fingers in the till. “He is in trouble. I think he is going to find it impossible to govern Pakistan.”

Khan is contemplating the fate of Nawaz Sharif, three-times prime minister of Pakistan, and one of the most prominent politicians linked to the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. According to the leaked files published worldwide this month, Sharif’s children raised £7m in loans against four flats in Park Lane, London, owned by offshore companies. Sharif denies any wrongdoing, and his son says the family never tried to conceal their assets, but Khan insists the flats were bought with money plundered from the Pakistani people.

For Khan, it feels like a vindication. It has been 20 years since one of the world’s most famous sportsmen reinvented himself as a pious political campaigner against corruption. For much of those two decades, he has been railing against Pakistan’s rulers and how they spend and stash their money in the west. “When I was living in England I saw how those ministers lived – spending £100,000 in casinos, living in palaces [when Pakistan] doesn’t have basic facilities,” he says. “That’s why I called my party Movement for Justice.”

“But I couldn’t get anywhere because the ‘coalition of the corrupt’ would help each other. They would conspire to protect each other, even though they were in different parties.”

Now Khan is back in London, partly to find investigative firms to look into Sharif’s accounts and “follow this money trail”.

“I wasn’t surprised by the Panama Papers,” he says, his eyes narrowing, “but I was happy. It is disgusting the way money is plundered in the developing world from people who are already deprived of basic amenities: health, education, justice and employment.

“This money is put into offshore accounts, or even western countries, western banks. The poor get poorer. Poor countries get poorer, and rich countries get richer. Offshore accounts protect these crooks.”

In comparison, the disclosures about politicians in the west, such as the financial dealings of the Cameron family, seem tame, he says. “You are talking about £30,000. I am talking about millions. You have to put it into perspective: we are sinking. “In Pakistan [almost] 50% of our population has stunted growth because they don’t have enough food. When the elite steal money from here – and I mean steal, not just avoid paying tax – then they can’t hold on to power.”

Khan is soon broadening his theme to global injustice and “world elites being able to siphon off money”. Then he breaks off – to thank the butler who has come in with a tray of coffees. The interruption highlights what an odd place this is to discuss the ills of elitism. True, Khan, in his grey suit and dark shirt, is the smartest thing in the room; the sofa has a rip, there are empty yoghurt pots, dumbbells are scattered in the corner (a sign that Khan is visiting his teenage sons). We we are sitting in what you might call a granny flat. Albeit one attached to a stately home.

Ormeley Lodge, a mansion on the edge of Richmond Park in south-west London complete with orchards and a tennis court, is home to Lady Annabel Goldsmith. It was bought by Sir James Goldsmith – a committed non-dom whose £1.2bn fortune was put into an overseas trust for his children after he died – the father of Khan’s first ex-wife Jemima.

It is here that Khan’s old ties clash most obviously with his new role as a conviction politician who admires Jeremy Corbyn and talks of “westoxification”. More than a decade after his first divorce, Khan still stays with the Goldsmith family when he is in London. The affection seems mutual – in the library there is a framed photograph of Khan laughing with his ex-wife and a golden-haired son. He tells me cheerfully that he and Lady Annabel – whose eponymous nightclub is the only one the Queen has ever visited – are old “gossip pals … When I come, we catch up at breakfast on all the gossip I have missed for six months.”

It must have been a long breakfast. Last month, Annabel’s son Zac Goldsmith, Conservative MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston, launched his official bid to become London mayor. On 23 March, Khan wrote a flurry of tweets supporting his ex-brother-in-law. It’s a curious endorsement. Goldsmith has been been dogged by questions over his finances, from the offshore trust set up by his father to the non-domiciled status he held before becoming an MP. But more surprisingly, he has been accused of running a divisive smear campaign against his Labour rival, Sadiq Khan. A former human rights lawyer, Sadiq Khan was dubbed a “radical” and accused of “providing cover for extremists”. Leaflets sent to Hindu and Sikh voters implied their jewellery was not safe with the MP for Tooting, south London.

Does the former cricketer know what has been going on? As a devout Muslim, he has just been discussing increasing Islamophobia in the UK with me, and looks uncomfortable at the mention of the campaign. “I am completely cut off from UK politics and this mayor race,” Khan says quickly, “and I haven’t met Zac [on this visit]. What his campaign is, I have no idea.”

But he is robust in his defence of Goldsmith’s character – praising his environmental credentials and his character. “My backing of Zac is purely [based] on knowing him for 22 years and urging him to go into politics.” Does he think he is Islamophobic? “Of course not. I think of anyone, he will be very fair with minorities, I think he is very just.” You don’t think he would use inflammatory rhetoric for political gain? “I don’t know the context he has come up with this. I don’t know Sadiq Khan at all, so I can’t comment. But I don’t think that is a line of attack anyone should take.”

After we meet, Khan releases a statement in response to similar questions from Channel 4, saying he has now read the campaign literature and believes the campaign is being conducted with “integrity, honesty, and by appealing to Londoners regardless of their colour or creed”.

Zac Goldsmith’s financial affairs, he says, show nothing more than a “fault in the system … Zac didn’t set up this company, and he didn’t do anything illegal. I know he is honest.”

If Khan is a loyal friend, his belief in Nawaz Sharif’s guilt is equally implacable. He hands me stacks of papers, which he says back up his claims. He cites inconsistencies in Sharif’s rebuttals over his children’s links to offshore companies.

In April 2000, after Sharif was toppled and put in prison by the country’s then military leader, Pervez Musharraf, allegations of corruption resurfaced. Sharif and his family say such claims are politically motivated. In a statement released after the Panama Papers came to light, the family claimed that as Sharif’s sons have lived abroad for more than two decades, they are not eligible to pay tax in Pakistan. Sharif’s daughter, who does live in Pakistan, was named simply as a trustee of one corporation.

Last weekend, Sharif arrived in London for medical treatment, which the New York Times claimed prompted rumours he would not return to the country until the investigations are over (a photo surfaced of him on Twitter shopping in Savile Row). Sharif has agreed to launch an inquiry headed by a retired judge; Khan is pushing for a sitting judge. If this fails, Khan says, he will begin street protests.

But will this change anything? Pakistani politics are renowned for their murkiness: Sharif was convicted of corruption in 2000, but claims allegations against his family are always politically motivated. Khan insists that this time, no one will look away. “The media and the people are on one page – they want [corruption] to be exposed. Military dictators have physical authority. Kings have physical authority, but democrats rule by moral authority. When you lose that, you can’t rule.”

Moral authority is something 63-year-old Khan is still banking on after a bruising few years. His cricketing skills and good looks won him poster space on the walls of a generation of Pakistani boys and girls, and undying devotion when he won them the World Cup for the first time in 1992. Educated at Pakistan’s version of Eton, Aitchison college, in Lahore, and Oxford, he fitted seamlessly into London society, mingling with royals and clubbing with Mick Jagger. But his political career has been more chequered.

After years of being seen as too naive for politics, in the run-up to his country’s 2013 elections he was drawing crowds of hundreds of thousands, inspired by his vision of a “new Pakistan”. Yet Sharif was elected for the third time. In 2014, Khan organised a public demonstration against the elections, whose legitimacy he questioned (although most international observers believed they were fair). Four months later, the protest was still continuing, but after clashes with police and fears the army would be called, it was far from a resounding success.

Like Sadiq Khan, Imran Khan, too, has faced claims that he is an extremist. His fierce opposition to drone attacks, and emphasis on dialogue with the Pakistani Taliban in the face of their brutal tactics, led to his being dubbed “Taliban Khan”. The militants even asked him to represent them in peace talks. Yet Khan laughs at this caricature. “I have always been anti-war. I don’t believe that Bush line: ‘You are either with us or against us’.

“There is a reason people pick up a gun, but you have to talk to them to find that out. You should go after the specific people responsible for killing – but in Pakistan you are dealing with 50 different groups who call themselves the Taliban; within that will be some who can be reconciled with.”

Most recently, Pakistani liberals despaired when Khan’s party seemed to oppose February’s landmark women’s protection bill. At issue was the fact that Khan had consulted a religious council for advice on the bill. It was a decision, he says, that was based on pragmatism: if the legislation was declared un-Islamic, it would become impossible to implement whether or not it was passed. “Our society has become so polarised, thanks to the war on terror. If they say: ‘This is Islam under threat’, then it harms your ability to reform your society.”

Khan’s personal life has been as turbulent as his recent political life and the subject of obsessive interest. He recently split from his second wife after 10 months. Writing in the Guardian, Reham Khan, said the experience had been traumatic. “I went and got married to the strongest man in the land, idolised by millions, only to face a barrage of abuse [from the public].”

Khan, in comparison, seems unscathed, saying “second marriages are not easy” and joking about trying again. “I am saying this as someone who, in his 63 years, has only been married for 10 years; but being married is better than being a bachelor – even for someone whose bachelor life was the envy of a whole generation.” With his ambition of leading Pakistan tantalisingly close, he says he has no regrets. “I could have lived off cricket, but you need a passion in life. The more you challenge yourself, the more exciting life is.”