CHARSADDA/ISLAMABAD – Stuck with 15 of his students on a third floor balcony of a campus building as gunmen came up the stairs, university director Mohammad Shakil urged Pakistani police arriving at the scene to toss him up a gun so he could shoot back.
“We were hiding … but were unarmed,” Shakil told Reuters, speaking after four Islamist militants attacked Bacha Khan University in Pakistan’s troubled northwest on Wednesday, killing more than 20 people.
“I was worried about the students, and then one of the militants came after us,” Shakil added. “After repeated requests, the police threw me a pistol and I fired some shots at the terrorists.”
As more details of Wednesday’s assault emerged, attention focused on at least two members of staff who took up arms to resist attackers bent on killing them and their students.
Some hailed them as heroes, as the country digested an attack which bore similarities to the massacre, in late 2014, of 134 pupils at an army-run school in Peshawar, about 30 km (19 miles) from where this week’s violence occurred.
Others questioned whether teachers should be armed, as many are, because it goes against the ideals of the profession.
Such a dilemma may have been far from the mind of chemistry professor Hamid Hussain, as he locked himself inside a room with colleagues after gunmen stormed an accommodation block on the university campus.
When the assailants broke down the door, Hussain fired several rounds from his pistol, according to Shabir Ahmad Khan, an English department lecturer taking cover in an adjacent washroom.
“They carried on heavy shooting and I was preparing myself for death, but then they did not enter the washroom and left,” Khan recalled.
Later on in the same building, Hussain fired again at the militants to allow some of his students to get away, surviving pupils told local media. Hussain was subsequently shot and later died from his wounds.
“Kudos to professor Dr Hamid Hussain. Our hero fought bravely n saved many,” Asma Shirazi, a popular talk show host, said on Twitter.
TEACHERS’ DILEMMA
Others, too, have credited the actions of Hussain and Shakil with helping to prevent the gunmen, armed with assault rifles and hand grenades, from spilling more blood.
Bacha Khan University also employed around 50 of its own guards who, witnesses said, fought for close to an hour to keep the gunmen isolated and prevent them from entering the girl’s hostel as the police and army arrived.
Pakistan army spokesman General Asim Bajwa said the security guards responded “very well” to the attack before reinforcements reached them.
In the wake of the 2014 school massacre, teachers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where Peshawar is located, were offered weapons training. Yet some are wary of arming teachers and encouraging them to engage in battle.
Gun ownership is common in Pakistan, owing to liberal licensing laws, and particularly so in the semi-autonomous tribal belt near the Afghan border where the threat of militant violence is high.
Jamil Chitrali, president of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa University Teaching Staff Association, said more teachers were now carrying personal weapons, as security had worsened.
“Arms are against the norms of my profession,” he said. “I am teaching principles and morality in the class. How I can carry a gun?”
WHO IS TO BLAME?
Four gunmen, all since killed, were involved in Wednesday’s attack, officials said. They used the cover of thick fog to scale the campus’ rear walls, before storming student dormitories and classrooms and executing people at will.
Some 3,000 students were enrolled at the university, many living on campus, while hundreds of visitors had arrived to hear a poetry recital to commemorate the life of local Pashtun nationalist hero and pacifist Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, after whom the university is named.
The provincial government declared a day of mourning on Thursday as grieving families buried their dead and survivors recalled their ordeal.
Who was to blame remains a mystery. A senior commander of the Pakistan Taliban, Umar Mansoor, on Wednesday claimed responsibility, but an official spokesman for the group later denied involvement, calling the attack “un-Islamic”.
The hardline Islamist movement was believed to be behind the school massacre just over a year ago, and educational institutions are an increasingly common target for militants wanting to frighten the public.
Pakistan has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected Taliban militants in the last year under a major crackdown against a group fighting to overthrow the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law.
The army said on Thursday the attack in Charsadda, near Peshawar, was coordinated from across the border inside Afghanistan, according to its investigations.
Army chief General Raheel Sharif has called Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the U.S. commander of international forces in Afghanistan to ask their help in locating those it holds responsible for the assault, army spokesman Bajwa said on Twitter.
The band of stranglers engaged in ‘thuggee’ in India during the 18th and 19th centuries is estimated to have killed between 50,000 and 100,000 people. In a strikingly similar occupational pursuit, the band of assailants engaged in ‘mugging’ on the streets of Karachi appears to have done far better.
Zubair Habib, the newly appointed chief of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), confirmed that in 2015 alone, 37,390 incidents of mugging at gunpoint were reported in Karachi. What he did not reveal was the fact that only one out of five victims ever bothers to lodge an FIR.
Today, ‘mugging’ is a far more sophisticated and efficient version of its forerunner – ‘thuggee’. While ‘thugs’ looped a ‘rumaal’ or an handkerchief around a victim’s neck, ‘muggers’ use sophisticated weapons. The use of weapons expedites the decision-making process and the deal is clinched within a matter of seconds.
The arrival of the British and their rigorous methods to fight crime meant that ‘thugs’ had met their match. A ‘Thuggee and Dacoity’ Department was established in 1835 and William Henry Sleeman was appointed as its first superintendent. Using simple techniques and plenty of common sense, Sleeman began to meticulously map each attack site and profile ‘thuggee’ gangs and their techniques. His specially trained police officers, disguised as merchants and travellers would infiltrate gangs and take preemptive actions to capture gangsters. The captured ‘thugs’ were given the incentive to save themselves if they informed on their accomplices. Special trial courts were set up and more than 3,700 ‘thugs’ were either hanged or ‘transported for life’. In a short span of about 10 years, Sleeman succeeded in eradicating what had plagued the Subcontinent for over two hundred years.
The Sindh police had only to follow the recipe of William Sleeman to eradicate the modern version of ‘thuggee’ in Karachi. The process can be started by identifying 10-20 intersections notorious for mugging incidents, installing cameras to cover these locations, stationing four armed policemen (in plain clothes) at each of these intersections in a manner that they have a full view of the location and by closely monitoring each intersection from a central control room. The police on duty can be alerted as soon as a mugging incident is observed (if the event has not already been detected). The police can use stun (or real) guns to disable and arrest culprits. The camera evidence should be enough to prosecute them. The element of surprise is a key factor in combating this crime. Finally, close-circuited cameras are discreetly relocated at different potential mugging sites so that muggers are never sure of when and what location is being actively monitored. It is most likely that the police would reject these simple methods and instead opt for more complex, cost-intensive and externally-funded options.
Why is the police hesitating to handle a localised version of the task that Sleeman could accomplish 200 years ago? Why has a dedicated ‘Mugging and Dacoity’ Department not been set up thus far? Why is a major part of the Sindh police employed to protect some 1,000 VIPs in the province, leaving people at the mercy of muggers and target-killers?
Along with the specially designed ‘mugger traps’, a number of other steps ought to be taken in parallel. A nationwide hotline for reporting the loss of cell phones should be advertised and implemented. Cancellation of SIM and IMEI should be made obligatory on mobile companies and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) as soon as information is received about a phone theft/snatching. Phones with missing or fudged IMEIs should not be allowed to operate and the PTA should assume the overall responsibility to ensure compliance. A national database of cancelled IMEIs should be maintained on the PTA’s website. The sale and purchase of phones (new and second-hand) must be traceable to equipment IMEI and the CNIC of the customer. If in the 19thcentury, William Sleeman could single-handedly eliminate ‘thuggee’ throughout India, how can a 21st century nuclear state not stop mugging in Karachi?
The writer is a management systems consultant and a freelance writer on social issues
John Kerry & Javad Zarif (Credit: washingpost.com)
VIENNA, Jan 16 — The United States and European nations lifted oil and financial sanctions on Iran and released roughly $100 billion of its assets after international inspectors concluded that the country had followed through on promises to dismantle large sections of its nuclear program.
This came at the end of a day of high drama that played out in a diplomatic dance across Europe and the Middle East, just hours after Tehran and Washington swapped long-held prisoners.
Five Americans, including a Washington Post reporter, Jason Rezaian, were released by Iran hours before the nuclear accord was implemented. The detention of one of the released Americans, Matthew Trevithick, who had been engaged in language studies in Tehran when he was arrested, according to his family, had never been publicly announced.
Early on Sunday, a senior United States official confirmed that “our detained U.S. citizens have been released and that those who wished to depart Iran have left.” The Washington Post also released a statement confirming that Mr. Rezaian and his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, had left Iran.
“Iran has undertaken significant steps that many people — and I do mean many — doubted would ever come to pass,” Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday evening at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which earlier issued a report detailing how Iran had shipped 98 percent of its fuel to Russia, dismantled more than 12,000 centrifuges so they could not enrich uranium, and poured cement into the core of a reactor designed to produce plutonium.
But Mr. Kerry was clearly energized by the release of the Americans, an issue he took up on the edges of almost every nuclear negotiation, and pursued in separate, secret talks that many involved in the nuclear issue were only vaguely aware were happening.
The release of the “unjustly detained” Americans, as Mr. Kerry put it, came at some cost: Seven Iranians, either convicted or charged with breaking American embargoes, were released in the prisoner swap, and 14 others were removed from international wanted lists. Many of the presidential candidates, including Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Donald J. Trump, denounced the swap as a sign of weakness, and they have long promised to review or withdraw from the nuclear agreement.
They particularly object to the release of about $100 billion in frozen assets — mostly from past oil sales — that Iran will now control, and the end of American and European restrictions on trade that had been imposed as part of the American-led effort to stop the program. It was not only sanctions that forced Iran to the table: the United States and Israel also developed one of the world’s most sophisticated cyberweapons to destroy the centrifuges that Iran has now been dismantling.
With the start of the so-called implementation day, the day that the accord goes fully into operation, the structures are finally in place for Tehran to re-engage with the world after decades of isolation.
But even in a week that started with the release of 10 sailors who drifted into Iranian waters — the Defense Department still has not provided an explanation of how that happened — and ended with a prisoner swap that seemed drawn from the pages of the Cold War, it was far from clear whether Tehran would choose to re-engage — at least very quickly.
In Tehran and Washington, political battles are still being fought over the merits and dangers of moving toward normal interchanges between two countries that have been avowed adversaries for more than three decades. But Mr. Kerry suggested that the nuclear deal had broken the cycle of hostility, enabling the secret negotiations that led up to the hostage swap. It was far from a sure thing: Just weeks ago, Iran was demanding the release of nearly 20 Iranians convicted or indicted in the United States; an administration official said that number had been whittled down to seven, but even that still rankled some.
“Critics will continue to attack the deal for giving away too much to Tehran,” said R. Nicholas Burns, who started the sanctions against Iran that were lifted Saturday as the No. 3 official in the State Department during the George W. Bush administration. “But the fact that Iran’s nuclear ambitions will be effectively frozen for the next 10 to 15 years is a real advantage for us,” he said, adding that “it was achieved by tough-minded diplomacy and not war.”
Still Mr. Burns, who now teaches diplomacy at Harvard and has advised Hillary Clinton, a Democratic candidate for president, argued that recent encounters with Iran — including its ballistic missile tests and its propping up of President Bashar al Assad of Syria, “demonstrate how complicated our relationship with Iran will continue to be.” He urged President Obama to issue new sanctions against Iran this weekend for the ballistic missile tests — a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions — to demonstrate that he will keep up the pressure.
A copy of the proposed sanction leaked three weeks ago, and the Obama administration pulled it back — perhaps to avoid torpedoing the prisoner swap and the completion of the nuclear deal. Negotiations to win the release of Mr. Rezaian, who had covered the nuclear talks before he was imprisoned on vague charges, were an open secret: Mr. Kerry often alluded to the fact that he was working on the issue behind the scenes.
Mr. Rezaian was held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison for practically all of his incarceration, and spent the first several months in solitary confinement. He suffered vision problems and relatives said he lost about 40 pounds. It wasn’t until about a year ago that the Iranian authorities publicly explained the nature of the charges against him.
His mother, Mary Rezaian, who lives in Turkey and went to Tehran last June to be closer to her son, said then that he had only just become aware of the global support for him, including an appeal for his release from Muhammad Ali, the former heavyweight boxing champion. Mr. Rezaian’s mother said she was permitted to visit him only occasionally and said it had become “ever harder” for him to cope.
Then, several weeks ago the Iranians leaked news that they were interested in a swap of their own citizens, which American officials said was an outrageous demand, because they had been indicted or convicted in a truly independent court system.
But behind the scenes, one senior American official said, “it was clear this would be the only way.” There was discussion inside the administration of similar swaps during the Cold War, a practice moviegoers have been reminded of recently in “Bridge of Spies,” about the negotiations to win the release of Francis Gary Powers.
Mr. Kerry insisted that the two sets of negotiations were completely separate, but he acknowledged they were related: The intense diplomatic contact with Iran — Mr. Kerry has spent more time with his American-educated Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, than any other foreign minister — made the prisoner talks possible.
The result was two parallel races underway — one involving implementing the nuclear deal, the other to get the prisoner swap done while the moment was ripe. The Iranians beat, by months, the C.I.A. and Energy Department estimates of how long it would take them to dismantle the far-flung elements of its nuclear empire, a long checklist that occupies scores of pages in the nuclear accord.
“They were highly motivated to get it done,” said one American official who was closely involved, because President Hassan Rouhani wanted money flowing into Iran, and more oil flowing out, before a critical election next month.
But there were last minute hitches. For example, the United States and Iran were struggling late Saturday to define details of what kind of “advanced centrifuges” Iran will be able to develop nearly a decade from now — the kind of definitional difference that can undermine an accord.
The result was that Mr. Kerry and Mr. Zarif veered from the monumental significance of what they were accomplishing — an end to a decade of open hostility — to the minutiae of uranium enrichment.
But Mr. Kerry emerged to tell reporters he had reached the goals he has talked about for two years. “Each of the pathways that Iran had to a nuclear weapon have been verifiably closed down,” he declared. Noting that Tehran has frozen much of its activity during the negotiations, he responded to critics of the deal — including, without naming them, the Republican presidential candidates — who say that Iran will immediately cheat.
“We have now two years of compliance under our belt,” he said. “Obviously, past performance does not guarantee future results.” But, he argued, “we know without doubt that there is not a challenge in the entire region that wouldn’t become much more complicated if Iran had the ability” to produce nuclear weapons.”
But Iran has something it desperately needs: Billions in cash, at a time oil shipments have been cut by more than half because of the sanctions, and below $30-a-barrel prices mean huge cuts in national revenue.
Just how much cash is a matter of dispute. A senior American official said Saturday that Iran will be able to access about $50 billion of a reported $100 billion in holdings abroad, though others have used higher estimates. The official said Iran will likely need to keep much of those assets abroad to facilitate international trade.
The Obama administration on Saturday also removed 400 Iranians and others from its sanctions list and took other steps to lift selected restrictions on interactions with Iran. Another 200 people, however, will remain on the sanctions list under for other reasons, including terrorist activities, human rights abuses, involvement in civil wars in Syria or Yemen or ties to the country’s ballistic missile program.
Under the new rules put in place, the United States will no longer sanction foreign individuals or firms for buying oil and gas from Iran. The American trade embargo remains in place, but the government will permit certain limited business activities with Iran, such as selling or purchasing Iranian food and carpets and American commercial aircraft and parts.
It is an opening to Iran that represents a huge roll of the dice, one that will be debated long after Mr. Obama he has built his presidential library. It is unclear what will happen after the passing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has protected and often fueled the hardliners — but permitted these talks to go ahead.
The president and Mr. Kerry, with a year and four days left in office, are hoping to foster new discussions that will bear fruit in other areas, including ending the war in Syria and moving, slowly, to the eventual restoration of diplomatic relations.
Rick Gladstone and William J. Broad contributed reporting from New York, Peter Baker from Washington and Thomas Erdbrink from Tehran.
Blue Mosque (Istanbul) inscription (Credit: Photo by author)
ISTANBUL, Jan 12 —An Islamic State suicide bomber struck Istanbul’s historic district Tuesday, killing at least 10 people in a blow to Turkey’s vital tourism industry that comes as the U.S. and its allies are stepping up their campaign against the extremists.
The bomber—identified by Turkish authorities as a Syrian citizen born in 1988—walked up to a foreign tour group preparing to visit the Blue Mosque and other world-renowned buildings and detonated the explosives shortly after 10 a.m., officials said. At least eight of those killed and nine of the injured were from Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy for Syrian refugees has come under increasing fire.
Turkey and the U.S. are developing new plans to choke off Islamic State supply routes by clamping down on a vital 60-mile stretch of the Turkey-Syria border, which the militants use to transport weapons, supplies and fighters in and out of their Syrian strongholds.
Ankara has asked the Pentagon to arm and train Turkish-backed Arab militants in Syria to help control their side of the border, officials said yesterday. U.S. officials say they are considering the request.
Islamic State, which has sought to extend its reach globally, has responded to the pressure by staging deadly attacks around the world, including two suicide bombings in Ankara in October that killed more than 100 people.
Tuesday’s attack may signal a new attempt by the Sunni Muslim extremist group to destabilize Turkey by targeting a crucial industry. Famously straddling the narrow Bosporus Strait between Asia and Europe, Istanbul is the world’s fifth most popular city for tourists world-wide and the third most visited in Europe after Paris and London, according to MasterCard Inc. ’s global destinations index. Some 32 million tourists visit Turkey annually, with Istanbul recording 12 million arrivals last year.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the bomber belonged to Islamic State.
“This attack is a repercussion on Turkey of the civil war that has been going on in Syria for five years, and its related proxy wars,” said Numan Kurtulmus, Turkey’s deputy prime minister.
Firas Abi Ali, a senior analyst with IHS Country Risk, described the Islamic State attack as a risky strategic shift that would “herald a broader campaign against Turkey” and “will likely provoke a significant backlash by the Turkish government.”
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged to press on with the fight. “Turkey is the primary target for all terrorist organizations active in the region,” he said. “Turkey will continue its determined and principled fight against terrorism until the very end.”
The German chancellor expressed her condolences to the victims’ loved ones and urged solidarity with Turkey. “Let us not forget the people in Turkey, who again and again have become targets of terror,” Ms. Merkel said.
More than 400,000 Syrians arrived in Germany last year to apply for asylum, according to government figures, part of a massive wave of migrants who crossed into Europe via Turkey.
Critics say last year’s uncontrolled migration has exposed Europe to heightened security risks, and opponents of Ms. Merkel’s welcoming policy have highlighted the possibility of Islamic State militants entering among the refugees.
Eyewitnesses and Turkish officials said the bomber appeared to target the group gathered near an ancient Egyptian obelisk, close to the entrance to the Blue Mosque compound.
“It was a single, very loud blast,” said Mahmut Karademir, a restaurant worker near the blast site. “Then people started running for their lives.”
Berlin-based Lebenslust Touristik GmbH said members of one of its tour groups were among the dead and injured.
“These are difficult hours for all of us,” said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. “Hours of mourning, of anger, and of outrage.”
Tourism makes up around 4% of Turkey’s economy and generated close to $30 billion last year, according to the government’s investment-promotion agency. Istanbul alone generated a third of that total.
Olivier Jager, chief executive of Forward Data SL, a tourism consultancy, said such attacks typically “trigger immediate travel cancellations, followed by lower volumes of new booking during some time,” a trend shown after the deadly attacks in Paris last year and a related security crackdown in Brussels.
“The time necessary for recovery will depend on the ability of the Turkish authorities to reassure leisure travelers that visiting Istanbul is safe,” said Mr. Jager.
The industry is already struggling to deal with a steep decline in Russian tourists after Turkish jets shot down a Russian warplane carrying out airstrikes along the Turkey-Syria border last fall.
Russia imposed various sanctions in response, including banning charter flights.
Mr. Kurtulmus, Turkey’s deputy prime minister, said Turkey had been systematically targeted since the July 20 bombing in the southeastern town of Suruç.
That attack, linked to Islamic State, killed 33 peace activists as they prepared to cross the border to the Syrian city of Kobani, where U.S.-backed Kurdish militants had just ousted Islamic State fighters.
Turkey soon found itself in a two-front war against Islamic State and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy for decades. Both groups are designated by Ankara and its Western allies as terrorist organizations.
With the peace process between Turkey and its Kurds stalled, the PKK and its affiliates have led an urban uprising in Turkey’s southeast.
They targeted a police station in Istanbul in a deadly assault in August, and claimed a mortar attack on the smaller of Istanbul’s two airports in December.
Ankara has responded by opening its air bases for U.S.-led coalition forces fighting Islamic State, launching limited airstrikes on the jihadist organization in Syria and on PKK camps in northern Iraq, and launching military operations against Kurdish insurgents in southeastern Turkey.
But the campaigns have failed to halt the death toll, as soldiers and police are killed battling the PKK, Kurdish separatists are killed by the dozens and civilians get caught in the crossfire.
—Emre Peker and Anton Troianovski in Berlin contributed to this article
Attack on Quetta polio center (Credit: youtube.com)
Quetta, Jan 12: A suicide bomber killed at least 15 people, most of them police, outside a polio eradication center in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Wednesday, the latest militant attack on the anti-polio campaign in the country.
Two militant groups – the Pakistani Taliban and Jundullah, which has links with the Taliban and has pledged allegiance to Islamic State – separately claimed responsibility for the attack.
The bomb blew up a police van that had just arrived at the center to provide an escort for workers in a drive to immunize all children under five years old in the poor southwestern province of Baluchistan.
“It was a suicide blast, we have gathered evidence from the scene,” Ahsan Mehboob, the provincial police chief told Reuters.
“The police team had arrived to escort teams for the polio campaign.”
Ahmed Marwat, who identified himself as a commander and spokesman for Jundullah, said his group was responsible.
“We claim the bomb blast on the polio office. In the coming days, we will make more attacks on polio vaccination offices and polio workers,” he said by telephone.
The Pakistani Taliban also claimed responsibility in a statement released by their spokesman, Mohammad Khorasani.
Teams in Pakistan working to immunize children against the virus are often targeted by Taliban and other militant groups, who say the campaign is a cover for Western spies, or accuse workers of distributing drugs designed to sterilize children.
The latest attack killed at least 12 policemen, one paramilitary officer and two civilians, officials said. Twenty-five people were wounded.
Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio remains endemic, the World Health Organization says.
The campaign to eradicate the virus in Pakistan has had some recent success, with new cases down last year, but violence against vaccination workers has slowed the effort.
(Reporting by Gul Yousafzai and Syed Raza Hassan; Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan and Jibran Ahmed in Peshawar; Writing by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Robert Birsel)
ISLAMABAD, Jan 11: Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen Raheel Sharif had green-lighted stern action against retired military officers and civilians involved in the Rs62 billion Defence Housing Authority (DHA) Valley scam around six months ago, sources in the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) have told Dawn.
A top NAB officer said on condition of anonymity that a senior military official had called on NAB Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry in July last year and assured him of the army’s full support to the bureau in investigating the matter.
The NAB chief was informed that the COAS was determined that no-one should be spared in the investigation, even army officials.
“The message Gen Sharif conveyed to the NAB chairman was that no-one involved in the scam should be spared and action should be taken, even if his own brothers are found to have links to the scam,” an official privy to the meeting said.
NAB has recently started flexing its muscles against Bahria Town chief Malik Riaz, brothers of former army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and some DHA officials. Now, it is looking into irregularities in the construction of the DHA Valley scheme — meant for families of military personnel who were killed in the line of duty — which was to be built on Punjab government land at the site of the Dadhocha Dam, near Rawat.
When contacted, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) declined to comment on the matter. However, it has been widely reported that the management of DHA has formally filed a complaint with NAB, asking it to investigate the matter.
The NAB source said that during their meeting, the military official had inquired about a NAB investigation into a complaint, submitted by retired Lt-Col Mohammad Tariq Kamal in Sept 2010. The complaint alleged that the DHA Valley real estate project was being developed on an area reserved for the proposed Dadhocha Dam. Following the verification of the complaint on June 13, 2011, the bureau had authorised an inquiry on July 3, 2012.
The NAB chairman had, at the time, indicated that former army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s brothers and other retired army officials were implicated. At this, the source claimed, the military officer told the NAB chief that Gen Sharif wanted a just investigation and that no-one should be spared.
The case was later tried by the Supreme Court and a two-judge bench headed by Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja heard the petition on July 16, 2015. In addition to demanding an explanation from NAB, the court also asked the Punjab government to respond to the petitioner’s allegations.
The petition claimed that DHA, Bahria Town and a private construction firm Habib Rafique had entered into a contract to develop various housing schemes including DHA Valley, DHA Phase II Extension, DHA Expressway and DHA Villas in Rawalpindi, as a joint venture (JV).
According to the petitioner’s evaluation, DHA Valley was valued at Rs110 billion, DHA Phase II Extension at Rs70 billion, DHA Expressway at Rs50 billion and DHA Villas at Rs100 billion. DHA-I and DHA-II are already-developed housing societies, but DHA Valley is yet to be developed.
According to NAB investigation, those who had paid for plots in DHA Valley found themselves in an awkward position when, in 2009 DHA transferred all the funds it had been paid (Rs62 billion) to the accounts of Bahria Town, which eventually failed to develop the scheme. Those cheated out of their money included 110,000 civilians, 41,000 serving and retired military officers, jawans and families of martyrs.
Gen Kiyani’s brothers respond
Also on Sunday, retired Brig Amjad Parvez Kayani issued a statement, claiming that the former army chief Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani had nothing to do with the actions and business interests of his brothers.
“Rather than talking about us as individuals, a reference is always made to Gen Kayani, as if he sponsored and facilitated us in everything we did or did not do. Everything under the sun is attributed to us without a shred of lawful or even raw evidence, departmental records or proof. These allegations are baseless. Gen Kayani never, in any way, sponsored or facilitated our business interests,” the statement said.
Brig Amjad claimed that his brother Kamran Kayani, an accused in the DHA City Lahore scam, was not a partner in the JV between DHA Lahore and Eden Private Limited, nor did he facilitate a deal between the two in favour of EDEN City. “In this JV, DHA Lahore is the senior partner and all plots/files which were marketed would have been issued by DHA and no-one else (including Kamran Kayani),” he said.
Kamran Kayani also has no connections with another JV, signed in 2009 between DHA Islamabad and Elysium. “Ownership of the Elysium was clearly established in a Supreme Court’s decision, which ordered EOBI to return 50 plots to Elysium and the company to pay back Rs1 billion to EOBI. The decision of the Supreme Court was implemented,” he said.
LAHORE: The Women on Wheels (WoW) project was launched on Sunday with a motorcycle rally for women on The Mall.
A total of 150 women motorcyclists, who completed training from the Special Monitoring Unit on Law and Order and City Traffic Police, took part in the rally.
Austrian Ambassador Brigitta Balaha and former Supreme Court Bar Association president Asma Jehangir also participated in the rally. Minister for Population Welfare Zakia Shahnawaz, Minister for Women Development Hameeda Waheedud Din, Special Monitoring Unit Senior Member Salman Sufi, Danish Ambassador Helen Neilson, American Consul General Zackary Harkenrider, UN Women Country Representative Jamshed Qazi and a prominent motorcyclist from Singapore, Juvena Huan, were present on the occasion.
She said that the Punjab government was taking effective measures for the elimination of gender discrimination, change in social mindsets and ensuring active participation of women in all sectors of the economy.
She said that in view of transport problems faced by women, the government had taken various mitigation measures. “On the instructions of the government, free training is being imparted to women to ride motorcycles under the aegis of Special Monitoring Unit,” she said.
She said that on International Women’s Day, 1,000 scooties would be distributed among women. Referring to various challenges and problems being faced by women, the minister said that equal rights and encouragement were being given to women so that they could play their role in the society.
Zakia Shahnawaz said that provision of equal opportunities of development to women was the responsibility of the Punjab government. “No effort will be spared for making the Women on Wheels project successful. The government will continue the process of legislation for empowerment of women,” she said.
Brigitta Balaha said that provision of opportunity and facilities to Pakistani women was a commendable step.
Zachary Harkenrider said that it was an honour for him to see the historic rally of motorcyclist women.
ISLAMABAD, Jan 7: Pakistan is mulling upgrading the constitutional status of its northern Gilgit-Baltistan region, which is also claimed by India, in a bid to provide legal cover to a multi-billion-dollar Chinese investment plan, officials said Thursday.
The move could signal a historic shift in Pakistan’s position on the future of the wider Kashmir region, observers have said, dealing another potential blow to fragile peace talk efforts that received a boost after India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Lahore in December.
The proposal would see the mountainous region mentioned by name for the first time in Pakistan’s constitution, bringing it one step closer to being fully absorbed as an additional province.
Islamabad has historically insisted the parts of Kashmir it controls are semi-autonomous and has not formally integrated them into the country, in line with its position that a referendum should be carried out across the whole of the region.
Sajjadul Haq, spokesperson for the chief minister of Gilgit-Baltistan Hafiz Hafeez ur Rehman, told AFP: “A high level committee formed by the prime minister is working on the issue, you will hear good news soon.”
Rehman, who arrived in Islamabad Thursday, was working on the finishing touches to the agreement, a senior official said, adding the document could be unveiled “in a few days”.
In addition to being named in the constitution, Gilgit-Baltistan would also send two lawmakers to sit in the federal parliament — though they would be given observer status only.
A third top government official from Gilgit-Baltistan said the move was in response to concerns raised by Beijing about the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, an ambitious $46 billion infrastructure plan set to link China’s western city of Kashgar to the Pakistani port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea.
“China cannot afford to invest billions of dollars on a road that passes through a disputed territory claimed both by India and Pakistan,” the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.
The corridor plans have been strongly criticised by New Delhi, with India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj in June calling the project “unacceptable” for crossing through Indian-claimed territory.
India and Pakistan have fought two full-scale wars over Kashmir, and any changes to the status quo could prove a further setback to hopes for dialogue that were revived after Modi made the historic Lahore visit.
Those efforts were already seen as fragile following a deadly attack on an Indian air base near the Pakistan border Saturday that was followed by a 25-hour siege on an Indian consulate in Afghanistan on Monday.
But according to Pakistani strategic analyst Ayesha Siddiqa, the move could also signal Islamabad’s desire to end the Kashmir conflict by formally absorbing the territory it controls — and, by extension, recognising New Delhi’s claims to parts of the region it controls, such as the Kashmir valley.
“If we begin to absorb it so can India. It legitimises their absorption of the Valley,” she said.
ISLAMABAD, Jan 8: Two men suspected of being involved in the murder of Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s self-exiled leader Dr Imran Farooq recorded their confessional statements before the Islamabad deputy commissioner on Thursday, sources said.
The FIA had arrested three suspects — Khalid Shamim, Mohsin Ali Syed and Moazzam Ali — for their alleged role in Dr Farooq’s murder.
While Shamim and Mohsin Ali confessed to their involvement, Moazzam Ali, said to be the prime suspect, was unwilling to come up with a confession, sources in the prosecution told Dawn.
In his statement recorded under Section 164 of the criminal procedure code, Mohsin said that Moazzam had handled the travel documents to live in the United Kingdom.
According to private news channel Geo News, Mohsin in his statement gave graphic details of the murder.
He said that at a university hostel in London he and his accomplice Kashif Khan Kamran, whose whereabouts are not known and may have died, prepared a plot to kill Dr Farooq.
He said they monitored the movement of Dr Farooq in London to know about his routine.
On the day of the murder, he said, he grabbed Dr Farooq while Kashif stabbed him and then bludgeoned him with a brick to ensure his death.
Shamim said that he had consented to join the murder plot because he was a diehard MQM activist, sources said.
Shamim claimed that senior MQM leader Muhammad Anwar gave the order to assassinate Dr Farooq.
The JIT constituted to investigate the murder had suggested that MQM chief Altaf Hussain regarded Dr Farooq as a threat and wanted him eliminated.
The JIT report also noted that all three suspects were members of the All Pakistan Muttahida Students Organisation, the MQM’s student wing.
The suspects were sent to Adiyala jail on 14-day judicial remand by an Islamabad anti-terrorism court.
The gruesome murder took place on Sept 16, 2010, near Dr Farooq’s London home.
The London police had named Mohsin Ali Syed and Mohammad Kashif Khan Kamran as wanted men in connection with the murder as they were in the UK when Dr Farooq was murdered. They arrested the three men during the last five years but released them later without filing any charges.
However, it was widely reported that both Mohsin and Kamran had been taken into custody by Pakistani intelligence agents the moment they landed at Karachi airport in 2010.
The third suspect, Khalid Shamim, was allegedly taken into custody in January 2011 and a petition regarding his ‘illegal detention and going missing’ was filed by his wife in the Sindh High Court.
In March last year, Moazzam was arrested at his Azizabad house for facilitating the suspects in getting a British visa.
On June 18, 2015, the Frontier Corps claimed to have arrested Mohsin and Shamim in Chaman in Balochistan.
The FC claimed that the two were illegally entering Pakistan from Afghanistan.
On Dec 5, 2015 — the day Karachi went to the local government polls — the FIA registered a murder case against MQM chief Altaf Hussain, his nephew Iftikhar Hussain, Moazzam Ali Khan, Khalid Shamim, Kashif Khan Kamran and Syed Mohsin Ali.
MQM’s reaction
Meanwhile, the MQM made it clear that none of its workers had anything to do with the assassination of Dr Farooq.
“The MQM is aware of reports in the media that individuals held in detention by Pakistani authorities have allegedly confessed to the murder of Dr Imran Farooq. We categorically state that no party personnel have had anything whatsoever to do with the tragic death of Dr Farooq. We mourn the loss of a man who was our friend and colleague for many years,” said a statement issued in Karachi on Thursday evening.
Published in Dawn, January 8th, 2016
Dubai, Jan 3: Iran’s supreme leader said on Sunday that Saudi Arabia will face “divine revenge” for executing a top Shia cleric whose death sparked protests in which the kingdom’s embassy in Tehran was firebombed.
“The unjustly spilled blood of this oppressed martyr will no doubt soon show its effect and divine vengeance will befall Saudi politicians,” state TV reported Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying. It said he described the execution as a “political error”.
Saudi Arabia executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr alongside 46 others including dozens of al-Qaeda members, in the country’s biggest mass execution in three decades.
In Tehran the Saudi embassy was ransacked after protesters threw petrol bombs and stormed the building. The kingdom’s consulate in Mashhad, Iran’s second biggest city, was also set on fire.
Saudi foreign ministry spokesman Mansur al-Turki called Iran’s reaction “irresponsible”, and summoned Tehran’s envoy in protest.
The embassy demonstrators were cleared out by police and 40 arrests have been made, Tehran’s prosecutor told the ISNA news agency, adding that more detentions could follow.
Tensions were already rising with Saudi Arabia summoning the Iranian envoy to the kingdom to protest at Tehran’s earlier angry response to the execution.
Hundreds of Shias marched through Nimr’s home district of Qatif in protest at the execution, eyewitnesses told Reuters news agency, chanting “down with the Al Saud” in reference to the Saudi ruling family.
