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The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Monday decided to send a team to Saudi Arabia to collect evidence in the Hajj scam.

The FIA team, which will comprise two senior officials, will probe financial irregularities in the Hajj scheme. It will also meet officials of the Saudi Hajj Ministry.

Meanwhile, the Islamabad District Court gave a 14-day judicial remand to former DG Hajj Rao Shakeel.

The Hajj scam revolves around an alleged case of corruption on part of the administration responsible for facilitating pilgrims in Saudi Arabia.

Thousands of pilgrims had to face great difficulties during Hajj because they were not provided with adequate accommodation.

Israel was concerned for former president Pervez Musharraf’s well-being and wanted him to remain in power in 2007.

This was revealed in a secret cable message originating from the American embassy in Tel Aviv that was leaked by whistle-blower website Wikileaks, in its latest release of classified information ‘Cablegate’.

The cable message contained records of US under secretary Burns’ meeting with Israel’s Mossad Chief Meir Dagan on August 17, 2007. Dagan met Burns to provide his assessment of the Middle East region, Pakistan and Turkey. According to leaked documents:

Dagan provided his assessment of the Middle East region, Pakistan and Turkey, stressing Israel’s (a) concern for President Musharraf’s well-being,  (b) view that Iran can be forced to change its behavior, and (c) sense that Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are unstable with unclear futures ahead of them.

The Israeli spy chief said that he was concerned about how long then-Pakistani President Musharraf would survive, saying:

“…he is facing a serious problem with the militants. Pakistan’s nuclear capability could end up in the hands of an Islamic regime.”

Dagan observed that Musharraf appeared to be losing control, citing that his coalition partners could threaten the former president in the future. He linked Musharraf’s retaining control over Pakistan to his dual president and commander-in-chief role.  The cable message says that if Musharraf cannot retain his army role, “he will have problems”.

The Mossad chief, observing attempts on Musharraf’s life, wondered whether he could survive the coming years.

Burns replied that South Asia has assumed vital importance in American foreign policy since September 11 and said the US is committed to denying Afghanistan as a safe-haven for Taliban and Al-Qaeda activity. He said the US is committed to support the Musharraf and Karzai governments as they face opposition from Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Burns also said that the US will remain engaged in the region for the long term.

Ehud Barak’s ‘nightmare’

In another cable message marked “confidential” also sent from the American embassy in Tel Aviv, Defense Minister Ehud Barak described Pakistan as his “private nightmare”.

Barak, who met two separate American delegations, said that if there is a potential Islamic extremist takeover in Pakistan, the world might wake up “with everything changed”.

When Barak was asked if the use of force on Iran might backfire with moderate Muslims in Pakistan, Barak said that although the two countries are interconnected, a causal chain between the use of force on Iran and public anger in Pakistan cannot be established.

The texts of the two US embassy cables discussed can be found here and here.

With additional reporting by Hassan Asif.

LAHORE: A court on Monday accepted a government request to seek life sentences for five Americans already jailed for 10 years on terror convictions.

The five young men were found guilty in Sargodha last June of waging war against the state and funding a terrorist group.

They have appealed, but no date has been set for a new hearing. Prosecutors are now demanding that the court toughen their sentences to life imprisonment.

Deputy public prosecutor Rana Bahktiar told AFP that he lodged the request with a two-judge panel on behalf of the Punjab government.

“The court will now hear our petition simultaneously with the appeal filed by the five boys against their conviction,” Bakhtiar said.

Prosecutors believe the men planned to travel to neighbouring Afghanistan and join Taliban-led militants fighting US and NATO troops.

Investigators claim the Sargodha five planned to travel to South Waziristan, a training ground for militants in Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt that was targeted by a major military operation last year.

The defendants, Umar Farooq, Waqar Hussain, Rami Zamzam, Ahmad Abdullah Mini and Amman Hassan Yammer, pleaded not guilty, saying they came to attend a wedding and wanted to go on to Afghanistan to do humanitarian work.

LAHORE: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on Monday suspended the party membership of Benazir Bhutto’s former political secretary and PPP leader Naheed Khan.

PPP Central Information Secretary Fauzia Wahab said that Naheed Khan’s suspension was due to her violating party policy during her speech in Lahore yesterday, adding that a notice had been served to Naheed.

Talking to Express News, the president of PPP Rawalpindi, Amir Fida Paracha said Naheed Khan had violated party policies and accused Naheed of leveling baseless allegations against the party leadership.

Naheed Khan, while speaking at the residence of Sardar Hur Bukhari to mark the party’s 44th Foundation Day, criticized the leadership of the party. She said that the party had been hijacked and that it is not seriously probing the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

LAHORE: Pakistan, on Monday, condemned the release of what the New York Times called a quarter of a million confidential American diplomatic cables released by whistleblower WikiLeaks, as an “irresponsible disclosure of sensitive official documents”.

The foreign office said it had been offically informed of the leaks by the US government in advance.

“At this stage we are examining the relevant documents and their contents,” ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told AFP when asked about the Times report.

The leaked cables revealed that the US has led top secret efforts to remove highly enriched uranium from Pakistan for years, worried it could be used to make an “illicit” nuclear device.

In May 2009, it quoted then US ambassador Anne Patterson as saying that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts. The Times attributed the reason to a nameless Pakistani official who said: “If the local media got word of the fuel removal, ‘they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons’”. Islamabad has been adamant that its nuclear weapons are in safe hands and US President Barack Obama has publicly concurred. But the Times said the leaked documents showed the United States trying to remove the uranium from a research reactor, fearing it could be diverted for use in an “illicit nuclear device”. The newspaper did not elaborate on how the United States had sought to remove the uranium or the nature of any such device. Experts estimate that Pakistan already has up to 100 nuclear weapons.

The United States has longstanding concerns about proliferation from Pakistan and is reported to have set up an elite squad that could fly into the country and attempt to secure its weapons should the government disintegrate.

Security forces, on Monday, arrested Taliban commander Abdullah and his brother from Karachi.

Abdullah was in charge of Imam Dherai centre which is considered a hub of militants.

Security forces arrested him during a raid at a house in Karachi. Authorities say he belonged to Kooza Bandai area of Swat and is also a close aide of Maulana Fazalullah.

The CID recently swooped down on militants in Karachi nabbing suspects who were planning attacks to target Shias ahead of Ashura. The suspects belonged to the militant groups Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Tehrik-i-Taliban.

Following the arrests, Karachi saw an audacious coordinated gun and car bomb suicide attack on the Crime Investigation Department (CID) building. There were speculations at that time that the attack was in response to the arrests CID had made the day before. However, a senior intelligence official speaking to The Express Tribune had denied the attack had anything to do with the arrests. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan had claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in retaliation to US air strikes in the country’s northwestern tribal areas.

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday issued a stay order against the death sentence of the blasphemy convict Aasia Bibi.

A petition had been filed in the Lahore High Court by Advocate Allah Bakhsh Leghari, contending reports of a presidential pardon. The petitioner said the president did not have the right to grant a presidential pardon as the decision was still pending in the court.

The Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court, Khwaja Sharif has therefore issued a stay order and served notices to the federation and the governor Punjab for a reply.

Meanwhile, religious organisations and civil society members continue countrywide protests and demonstrations, for and against Aasia bibi’s sentence.

Earlier, The Express Tribune had reported that government officials and lawmakers were in agreement that the president cannot pardon Aasia Bibi.  According to Article 45 of the Constitution of Pakistan, the president has the power to grant pardon, reprieve and respite, and to remit, suspend or commute any sentence passed by any court, tribunal or other authority. However, a home department official who had spoken to The Express Tribune on condition of anonymity had said that the Punjab government had observed – in its reply to the federal government’s proposal to abolish the death penalty – that the power of the president to grant pardon only extends to Tazir punishments.

A sentence under a Tazir is imposed on the state’s command and not as a right of the individual under Allah’s law, the Punjab government had held.

Muhammad Safdar Shaheen Pirzada, a lawyer, had also said, “The president can grant pardon to a person who has committed any offence against the state. However, the president has no power to extend pardon if an offence is  omitted against religion, the Holy Prophet (pbuh) or Allah.”

Pakistan and Sri Lanka on Sunday agreed to expand their relationship from defence cooperation to an ‘overall comprehensive engagement’ involving trade, communications and culture, during President Asif Ali Zardari’s landmark trip to the country.

Four agreements relating to visa abolition of diplomatic and official passports, agricultural cooperation, and assistance in customs matters and agreement in the fields of arts and creative studies were signed between Sri Lanka and Pakistan this afternoon following the bilateral talks between the two presidents.

During the exclusive meeting, the presidents agreed on taking the existing level of Pakistan-Sri Lankan relationship to “new heights”, encompassing a multi-sector engagement in addition to defence, which has been a major sector of collaboration between Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the past.

Zardari said Pakistan was happy to note that the Sri Lankan government had been able to defeat terrorism, and stressed the need for joint cooperation to counter the menace.

He said Pakistan always supported the unity, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Sri Lanka and assured that despite its own economic difficulties, Pakistan would continue to contribute towards the socio-economic development of Sri Lanka.

Zardari emphasised the need to reactivate the Joint Economic Commission (JEC) to facilitate bilateral economic cooperation and monitor its progress.

The meeting was followed by the delegation level talks after the two presidents witnessed the signing of three agreements and a Memorandum of Understanding on waiving off visas for officials and diplomats, cooperation on customs, agriculture development and cultural exchange.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Defence Minister Ch Ahmed Mukhtar and BOI Chairman Saleem Mandviwala signed the
agreements from the Pakistani side.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.

The Supreme Court is to resume the hearing of a contempt-of-court case against eight judges who took oath under the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) issued by former president Pervez Musharraf on November 3, 2007.

In its judgment on July 31 last year, the apex court held more than 60 judges of the superior courts responsible for contempt of court for swearing an oath under the PCO, violating the November 3 judgment of the Supreme Court.

After the judgment, more than 50 judges tendered unconditional apologies before a 14-member bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. While eight judges, including the former chief judge of the apex court, Abdul Hameed Dogar, decided to contest the Supreme Court verdict.

Legal wizards believe that two aspects of this case are important. The court would hear intra-court appeals of five judges, while contempt proceedings would be initiated against Justice Syed Shabbar Raza Rizvi and Justice Hasnat Ahmad Khan. Dr Abdul Basit would argue against the Supreme Court’s decision to serve contempt notices to the sitting judges of superior court.

In the intra-court appeals case, SM Zafar and Ali Zafar would defend Justice Khurshid Anwar Bhinder, Justice Hamid Ali Shah, Justice Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry and Justice Yasmin Abbasi.

The court would also hear contempt cases against Justice (retd) Abdul Hameed Dogar and Iftikhar Hussain Chaudhry, the former chief justice of the Lahore High Court. Justice (retd) Iftikhar Hussain Chaudhry, Justice Hamid Ali Shah and Justice Jehanzeb Raheem’s petitions against Supreme Court Registrar Dr Faqir Hussain would also be heard.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.

Devastation caused by the floods that have damaged or destroyed more than 1.7 million homes across the country has forced the stricken population to start rebuilding with whatever is available to them – and they are ending up building unsafe houses.

“People are helpless and are in dire need of technical guidance; the challenge is to persuade people to build back better and safer,” said Siamak Moghaddam, Country Director UN-HABITAT.

According to UN-HABITAT sand deposits and stagnant waters have severely affected some areas’ ability to be considered safe for rebuilding houses or to be used for agricultural initiatives.

The agency also stresses the need to get experts on ground to technically assist the people to ‘build back safer’. According to the UN-HABITAT team, assessments across Mardan, Charsadda, Sukkur, Larkana and Dadu, have revealed that a lack of funds and assistance has led people to rebuild unsafe houses.

The agency has urged all humanitarian communities to make a combined effort to help facilitate the reconstruction process of helpless people who have lost almost everything.  The government of Pakistan has given Rs100,000 to the flood-affected people to rebuild.“The government has taken a great step but they need to make sure that the people are actually rebuilding. People have to augment this with their own resources and find solutions that can be accommodated within this,” said Moghaddam.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, a UN- HABITAT official said that this has been seen in the past, with the earthquake of 2005 and in Balochistan, where people received cash for reconstruction of their homes but they did not do so. This might happen once again; it is not about the lack of funds, people will receive the cash, but it’s about rebuilding of homes which may not happen, he said.

Moghaddam said that the Pakistan Development Forum is a platform for provinces and the federal government to present the situation to the international community.

“Provincial governments do have plans, but some plans need to be further refined. We are happy to hear from presentations that Pakistan’s main reliance will be on itself” said Moghanddam.

Published in the Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.

In violation of a Supreme Court directive, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is dragging its feet on the degree verification process of 54 federal and provincial legislators, who allegedly contested the 2008 elections with fake academic degrees.

An extraordinarily lenient procedure adopted by the ECP for degree verification has proved to be the main cause for the delay.

The Supreme Court in its landmark judgments on June 14 this year directed the ECP to prosecute the accused parliamentarians by session judges.

The apex court had further directed the ECP to ensure that the investigations in the matter should be conducted ‘’honestly, efficiently and expeditiously before sending them for trial.”

In any case, it should not take each sessions judge who gets seized of the matter, more than three months to conclude the same, the apex court judgment had said.

However, despite the passage of five months, the ECP has not been able to refer a single case against the accused for prosecution. In fact, Minister for Postal Services Mir Israrullah Zehri, who had flatly refused to appear before the commission, was not put on trial.  It appears that it will take the ECP at least two more months to fulfil its constitutional and legal obligations and prosecute the accused legislators.

Two federal ministers and a provincial minister are among the lawmakers whose academic documents were declared ‘fake’ by the Higher Education Commission. There are many cases of accused MPs who were given more than three chances to appear before the ECP, but failed to abide by the law.  It is mentioned in the summons issued to the accused MPs that “if you fail to appear before the ECP it will be concluded that you have nothing to defend yourself.”

“We are not bothered as to  what people say about us,” said secretary ECP  Ishtiaq Ahmed when asked to comment on  the general perception that the ECP is under government pressure to delay the process.

‘’We are aware as to what people say about us, but let me assure them that neither the matter will be delayed nor will it be decided in a rush,” he said . “We are not being asked by anyone to delay the process,” Ahmed added.

The ECP official added that the findings of the HEC are not the final word on the issue. ‘’We are giving all legislators the right to defend themselves before sending their cases for trial,” he said.

The secretary parried the question as to why the process of examining the cases of 54 MPs is not being conducted “expeditiously” as directed by the SC.

However, he told The Express Tribune that by the end of next month most cases would be finalised – to be referred for prosecution or otherwise. “Four cases against accused MPs have been sent to the chief election commissioner for his decision,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.

Folk diva Abida Parveen has been shifted to a private room from an intensive care unit of a hospital here on Sunday after her condition stabilised, doctors and relatives of the legendary singer said on Sunday.

The 56-year-old singer suffered a cardiac arrest after experiencing chest pains during a performance at an alumni function of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (Lums) on Saturday night. She was initially brought to the National Hospital in Defence and was later shifted to the Doctors Hospital where doctors recommended immediate angioplasty.

Dr Muhammad Sarwar, who treated Abida, said that they had completed the angioplasty and fitted a stent. He said she was out of danger and added that she would be discharged in about four days. He confirmed that Abida had suffered a heart attack.

“She is much better now than she was last night. Her main artery was 95 per cent blocked when she had the heart attack. Normally it takes four to five days for a patient to recover after a heart attack and we are hoping that she, too, recovers soon,” he said.

A hospital official, requesting anonymity, told The Express Tribune that Abida’s daughter Sidra is accompanying her at the hospital.

“Her fans can’t meet her right now. She is under medication and is asleep,” the official said.

Doctors said that she would fully recover in four to five weeks and be able to start singing again. Friends and family of the singer have appealed to her fans to pray for her recovery.

Abida is famous for her melodious folk songs not only in Pakistan, but around the globe. In a career spanning over more than three decades, she has performed around the world and has a huge fan following.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.

ISLAMABAD: Over 3,000 registered criminals are roaming the streets of Karachi, despite 734 police encounters in the city between January and October this year, the Sindh home department has told Islamabad in a secret report.

In the report, which has been compiled by the Sindh police, the federal government has been informed that, on average, 35,000 crimes of various nature are annually reported to the police by the citizens of Karachi.

Top officials of the Karachi police, have said that during the first ten months of this year, 337 people were gunned down in targeted killings of which 108 were shot down in August. They have also admitted that despite proactive policing and elimination of several criminal gangs in the city during the year, they were unsuccessful in curtailing the number of murders in Karachi.

According to a copy of the report available with The Express Tribune, 72 criminals were killed in these shootouts while 33 policemen lost their lives.

The report gives complete data about Karachi, its inhabitants and the fragile law and order situation in this teeming metropolis of 18 million people, including 1.8 million aliens. There are 103 police stations and 33,000 policemen, 2,815 schools, 233 colleges and 40 universities. The current number of vehicles in Karachi, according to the report, is 1.8 million. There are 3,480 mosques, 314 imambargahs, 1,492 madrassahs, 251 shrines, 233 temples and 85 churches, the report said.

Analysing police performance, the report said that although they could not arrest the trend of murders in the city, there was a decrease of 25 per cent in street crime, 20 per cent in vehicle theft and 33 per cent in cell phone snatching. They also claimed significant progress in the recovery of illicit arms and ammunition and arrests of proclaimed offenders and absconders.

The condition of Karachi, virtually under the siege at the hands of the criminal elements, can be gauged from the section of the report dealing with the recovery of arms and ammunition from these criminals. In 2010 alone, the police recovered two light machine guns, 80 sub machine guns, 84 rifles, 132 repeaters, nine shot guns, 4,042 pistols, 265 revolvers, eight rocket-propelled grenades, 59 hand grenades, 200 kilogrammes of explosives and one suicide vest. The pistol appears to be the criminals’ most favoured weapon, according to the data.

The report shares statistics of targeted killings in the city, month and zone wise. According to the data, the number of people falling victim to target killings was 17 in January, four in February, 14 in March, 35 in May, 25 in June, 35 in July, 108 in August, 17 in September and 79 in October. The report cites the following reasons for spikes in the killings in particular months: anti-encroachment drive in May, assassination of a political worker in July, assassination of Member Provincial Assembly Raza Haider in August and the Orangi by-elections in October.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.

ISLAMABAD: “I still wonder why they flogged me,” says Saira, the woman who was publicly flogged by the obscurantist Taliban in the Swat Valley of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa last year.

With tears rolling down her cheeks, Saira recalls the humiliation, the trauma she suffered when she was flogged by a self-styled Taliban vigilante squad amid jeers of a gun-toting crowd of militants. She was punished for “having an extramarital affair” with a man from her in-laws.

Saira, a resident of the Asharbanr area, in Charbagh tehsil, the erstwhile stronghold of the fugitive cleric Maulana Fazalullah, locally known as Mullah Radio, who had spearheaded a bloody campaign for the enforcement of his own hard-line version of Islamic laws in the valley.

Saira was married to Fazal Azim, a day labourer. And she was awarded 30 lashes by a self-styled Taliban shariah court for a crime she had never committed.

“Some relatives of my in-laws, who supported the Taliban, had blamed me to settle old scores with my spouse,” Saira told The Express Tribune with her little son in her lap.

“One day the son of Gul Nazar and Maulvi Abdur Rehman came to our house and accused me of having an illicit relation with a man in my in-laws,” she said. “I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe I’ll be charged with such a serious crime in a joint family,” she added.

Saira said that her husband was working as a day labourer in Hyderabad, Sindh, at that time. The Taliban sharia court “convicted” me without hearing me.

“An announcement was made from the loudspeakers of the village mosque about my ‘conviction’. And all villagers were invited to a local state-run school to watch the flogging,” Saira recalled the incident.

“It was unbelievable. I rushed to the punishment spot to convince them of my innocence. But they refused to hear me. They flogged me 15 times, right in front of a crowd of villagers,” she said, breaking down in tears.

As if it was not humiliation enough, the next day they took her to another place in the village and whipped her again.

“I wanted to drop dead. I wanted to end my life. Because I couldn’t face local villagers,” she said of the trauma she suffered after the incident.

But the reaction from the villagers, contrary to her fears, was sympathetic. “They condemned the Taliban for punishing me without hearing me out,” Saira said.

Ironically, after punishing Saira, the Taliban then asked her in-laws to call her spouse back from Hyderabad because they wanted to punish him too. “We were unable to understand why they wanted to punish my husband who was not even present in the village,” he added.

Saira said that she has left the matter to God. “We are poor and helpless people. We want to live peacefully. I wish for a divine chastisement for those who humiliated me,” she added.

Saira is not the lone woman who suffered at the hands of the loyalists of Maulana Fazlullah. Scores of other women were punished by the so-called sharia courts on the basis of hearsay during the ruthless and draconian rule of the Taliban.

Saira, who is expectant now, says she is waiting for help from human rights organisations to start her life afresh.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.

ISLAMABAD: Russia has sent out a clear but deliberately muted diplomatic signal that it is rankled by Pakistan’s refusal to provide consular access to a high-profile al Qaeda activist who was sentenced to death by a military tribunal in 2005.

Moscow quietly cancelled the scheduled visit of a delegation to Islamabad last week after Pakistan rejected a request for access to Akhlaq Ahmed Akhlas, a Russian national who was convicted for his role in an assassination attempt on the then president, General Pervez Musharraf, in December 25, 2003.

This is the second time in five years that Islamabad has turned down such a request by the Russian embassy, a diplomatic source told The Express Tribune.

The Russian embassy in Islamabad had made a request to meet Akhlas Ahmed Akhlaq early this month, the source said.

Akhlas and the others convicted in the case have appealed against their sentences. Their appeal is pending in court.

In 2005, the Foreign Office rebuffed a similar request by the Russian mission. The delegation from the Russian ministry of foreign affairs was scheduled to attend the “fifth round of bilateral consultation on consular matters” in Islamabad last week. Moscow did not explain the reason for their absence. Nor did it inform the Foreign Office whose staff were waiting for them.

“The delegation did not take the flight for Islamabad from Moscow,” was how Russian embassy staff described  the team’s absence when contacted by phone.

Russian officials who met Akhlas’s mother in Volgograd quoted her in the media as saying that her son had left Russia in 2001 and had not been heard of since.

For its part, the Foreign Office could not prove conclusively whether the abrupt and one-sided cancellation was made in reaction to Pakistan’s rejection or it was due to some other reason.

Earlier, while refusing the meeting Russian diplomats were told that Akhlas had been arrested under the anti-terrorism law that forbids diplomatic right of access to the arrested or convicted persons.

In their desperation to gain access to the convict, Russian diplomats approached the National Crisis Management Cell (NCMC) in the interior ministry. After being rejected by the NCMC the Russians went to the ministry of foreign affairs where they met the same treatment.

Akhlas was one of the five men, including a soldier, who were  sentenced to death by a military tribunal for their involvement in al Qaeda inspired attempt on the life of General Musharraf.

Three persons convicted of involvement in the plot were awarded jail terms.

A low-ranking serviceman was executed after the judgment while Akhlas and three civilians challenged the sentence in Lahore High Court where their petition is still undecided.

The attacks were planned by Abu Faraj al Liby, said to be al Qaeda’s third-ranking leader who was arrested from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in 2005.

In their petition the four men argued that being civilians they could not be tried by a military court under the Pakistan Army Act.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.

ISLAMABAD: King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme, according to US documents revealed by WikiLeaks and published by several newspapers on Sunday.

A cable to Washington from the US embassy in Riyadh recorded the king’s “frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons programme.”

The memo said that the king told the Americans to “cut off the head of the snake,” and said that working with the US to roll back Iranian influence in Iraq was “a strategic priority for the king and his government.”

The documents also show US Defence Secretary Robert Gates believed any military strike on Iran would only delay its pursuit of a nuclear weapon by one to three years.

WikiLeaks on Sunday released around 250,000 classified cables – some sent as recently as February this year – to several media outlets worldwide. The Guardian reported that the documents were allegedly downloaded by a US soldier and passed on to the website. WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange said the released documents addressed “every major issue in every country in the world”.

According to a review of the WikiLeaks documents published by the New York Times, the documents show Saudi donors remained chief financiers of militant groups like al Qaeda and that Chinese government operatives have waged a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage targeting the United States and its allies.

Among scores of other disclosures that are likely to cause uproar, the cables detail grave fears in Washington and London over the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme, alleged links between the Russian government and organised crime and devastating criticism of the UK’s military operations in Afghanistan.

Global Espionage

The cables also reveal how the US uses its embassies as part  of a global espionage network, with diplomats tasked to obtain not just information from the people they meet, but personal details, such as frequent flyer numbers, credit card details and even DNA material.

Classified “human intelligence directives” issued in the name of Hillary Clinton or her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, instruct officials to gather information on military installations, weapons markings, vehicle details of political leaders as well as iris scans, fingerprints and DNA.

The most controversial target was the leadership of the United Nations. That directive requested the specification of telecoms and IT systems used by top UN officials and their staff and details of “private VIP networks used for official communication, to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, personal encryption keys”.

Pakistan’s nuclear program

The cables reveals that since 2007, the United States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani research reactor that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device.

In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, “if the local media got word of the fuel removal, ‘they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,’ he argued.”

King Abdullah on Zardari

The cables also disclose frank comments behind closed doors. Dispatches from early this year, for instance, quote the aging monarch calling President Asif Ali Zardari the greatest obstacle to Pakistan’s  progress. “When the head is rotten,” he said, “it affects the whole body,” reported the New York Times.

Damage control

The Pentagon immediately condemned WikiLeaks’ “reckless” dump of classified State Department documents and said it was taking steps to bolster security of US military networks.

The White House said the leak of the diplomatic cables could compromise private discussions with foreign governments and opposition leaders and may put at risk the lives of named individuals living “under oppressive regimes.”

The US government, which was informed in advance of the contents, has contacted governments around the world, including in Russia, Europe and the Middle East, to try to limit any damage. Sources familiar with the documents say they include corruption allegations against foreign leaders and governments.

WikiLeaks had reported earlier on Sunday that its website was under attack, but said later that media outlets would publish some of the classified documents it had released even if the group’s website crashed.

“El Pais, Le Monde, Speigel, Guardian & NYT will publish many US embassy cables tonight, even if WikiLeaks goes down,” the website said in a Twitter posting an hour after it tweeted that its site was under attack.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.

ISLAMABAD: In what can best be seen as a return to strong-arm tactics of the Punjab government, two senior officials of the Punjab Police were forcibly picked up in midnight raids on their homes after it transpired that both of them had distanced themselves from an alleged intelligence report that warned of an attack on the Lahore High Court Chief Justice, Khwaja Muhammad Sharif.

Additional IG Special Branch, Colonel (retd) Ehsanur Rehman and his deputy, Shahid Mahmood, were picked up from their residences and detained in an unspecified location where they were allegedly manhandled, say sources.

Highly-placed officials say that it was this treatment that forced the two to retract their earlier statements to the FIA in which they had stated that they had no knowledge of any report into the plot to kill the Lahore High Court chief justice. Instead, they went ahead and said they had authored the report.

Sources said that during the two-day detention in a safe house of the Punjab police, both the Special Branch officers were put under pressure to make them fall in line. One source even claimed that Colonel Ehsan and Shahid Mahmood were manhandled during their custody to make them own the information report before the FIA inquiry commission.

After initial resistance, both of them gave new statements in which they confirmed they had dispatched such a report to CM Punjab Mian Shabaz Sharif and to PML-N chief, Mian Nawaz Sharif. Sources have now confirmed that Colonel Ehsan, a former operative of the ISI, was posted at the Attock Fort during the detention of the Sharif brothers where he allowed them a number of concessions and favours. After the PML-N came to power, Ehsan cashed in on these favours and was appointed to the lucrative position of AIG Punjab Special Branch.

Director FIA Zafar Ahmed Qureshi, a respected officer, who was appointed to inquire into the alleged plot to kill the CJ of the Lahore High Court, in his 499-page report submitted to the Chief Justice of Pakistan on November 2, concluded that there was no evidence available to establish the authenticity of the information report issued by the Punjab government  into the alleged murder plot.

Zafar Qureshi had reached this conclusion after interviewing and investigating 41 officials concerned. None of them owned the report, which was deliberately leaked to the media to create a sensation and embarrass the federal government.

Giving details as to how even two top guns of the Special Branch Punjab were subjected to serious physical pressure to make them own the report, sources claimed that even the Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhary was informed about the “abduction” of these two senior officers — Col Ehsan and Shahid Mahmood–in his chamber on September 19.

The CJ had called a high level meeting of government officials to discuss the report. FIA director Zafar Ahmed Qureshi who had accompanied Secretary Interior in this meeting, had brought to the notice of the CJ that two of the key witnesses, who had already recorded their statement before him and had denied sending any report to government, were forcibly picked up from their houses after police raids.

The sources said that the CJ had got angry with IG Punjab Tariq Saleem Dogar as to why had his officers not arrested Babar Sindhu, who in the news item was tipped as the ringleader of the murder plot.

Colonel Ehsan had personally approached FIA Director Zafar Ahmad Qureshi to record his statement and told him that he was facing threats, as some top guns of the Punjab government were trying to frame him, sources said. Ehsan was so frightened that he went to the official residence of Zafar Qureshi at 2 am to record his statement and disowned sending any such report to government.

As he was recording his statement, his wife made a telephone call on his mobile and in a distraught state, she told her husband that the Punjab police had raided their house and they were asking about his whereabouts. Her wife told him that policemen had even misbehaved with her and wanted to get him “at all costs.”

Col Ehsan rushed to his house from where he was taken into custody by the Punjab police. He remained in custody till he agreed give a fresh statement owning the report.

DIG Mushtaq Sukhera and a CIA SP were said to have put Colonel Ehsan and Shahid Mahmood under pressure during these two days of custody and all sorts of torture methods were used, it is alleged.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.

The black box of the Russian cargo plane that crashed in Karachi on Sunday was found on Monday.

The debris of the wrecked plan has been removed from Karachi Navel Colony. Air Commander Khwaja Abdul Majeed and DG Civil Aviation Nadeem Khan toured the crash site.

Police Surgeon, Doctor Hamid Patel said some bodies have been identified and have been released to the victims families.

The Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAA) spokesperson Pervez George said that the CAA had started their analysis of the box to determine the cause of the crash.

Updated from print edition (below)

9 out of 11 bodies recovered

Rescue workers pulled nine bodies out of the 11 men killed from the site of the plane crash in Naval Housing Scheme (NHS) residential area on Sunday.

The dead included eight foreign crew members of the Russian-made Ilyushin IL-76 cargo aircraft. Two bodies of the crew along with the black box of the aircraft remained missing till the filing of this report. The crew included seven Ukranians and one Russian, whose names were Captain Nyzsnyk Taras, Co-pilot Dyadechko Sergey, Navigator Shpunt Oleksandr, Flight Engineer Solo Danko Yedgen, Radio Operator Malyy Golozymyr, Load Master Ylyanov Alexander (Russian), Engineer Koroliov Victor and Engineer Abaturov Vicheslav.

Three labourers, Khuda Baksh, Aijaz and Shahid, working at bungalows under construction in NHS, were also killed. Edhi spokesperson Anwar Kazmi said these three bodies were sent to Multan, while the remaining six were being kept at the welfare organisation’s morgue. “Three out of those six can be somewhat recognized, but the rest of the three are just bits of flesh with one or two hands and toes strewn together,” Kazmi said.

Russian consulate press secretary Alex Zenkae said although the plane was manufactured in Russia, it was operated by a Georgian private airline, Sunway. He added that they were in touch with the family of Russain national Alexander and his body would be flown back once it was identified through DNA tests.

According to sources at the Jinnah International Airport, the aircraft bearing flight No. MCC-4411 arrived in Karachi at 1600 hours from the UAE’s Fujairah emirate and was on its way to Khartoum, Sudan when it crashed within two minutes of take off. It was carrying a load of 32 tons, most of which was tents used in humanitarian assistance. “The plane’s estimated capacity was between 70 and 80 tons, so it wasn’t over loaded,” a senior official said.

The plane was chartered by a local company Executive Air, while the cargo was provided by Vision Air. The handling agent of the aircraft was Shaheen Airport Services.

“These type of cargo planes are classified as non-scheduled flights since the arrival details are not known until a few hours ago or just a day before,” an official said, adding that a number of such cargo flights come and go from the UAE and Afghanistan.

No Pakistani flight engineers checked the aircraft before it took off. “This is normal operating procedure since such cargo aircraft have their own engineers who give the go-ahead to fly to their crew,” he said.

Civil Aviation Authority spokesperson Pervez George said that an investigation committee had been formed to probe the incident, which includes Air Commodore Khwaja Abdul Majeed and Group Captain Dr Abdul Boogio. When asked what happened to the report expected by the committee formed when another plane crashed four weeks ago on November 5 in the city, George said “that team is still investigating the incident.”

Earlier, there was absolute chaos at the Naval housing colony when the plane crashed at around 1:50 am. Hundreds of people rushed into the well-guarded residential area when the incident took place as soon as the gates were opened to allow ambulances and fire brigades inside. Many parked their cars in the middle of the road that caused hardships to the rescue workers. Pakistan Airforce Firefighters Nadeem and Qaiser, who brought two of their fire engines said normally it would have taken them just five minutes to reach the spot, but the hurdles on the way kept them waiting for an hour on the road.

Many youngsters at the crash site freely lifted pieces of the aircraft as souvenirs while making video recordings with friends on mobile phones. The Naval Police showed up late around 5 am when people were forced out of the area amid announcements: “Kick out all these civilians” on megaphones.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.

KARACHI: Children playing cricket on the service road saw the big bird fall flaming from the sky. “My friend shouted that a plane had caught fire. Suddenly, night turned into day,” described 14-year-old Aftab Aslam, who lives in the naval housing colony near Dalmia.

The Sudan-bound cargo plane, a Russian-made Ilyushin IL-76 aircraft, crashed near the naval housing colony Sailors Residential Estate (SRE) Majeed, the biggest naval colony in South Asia, early on Sunday.

“We all thought the plane was about to fall on us and so we started running towards block 30. There was a big bang, which jolted the entire block 30 building,” Aftab said. “The smell of petrol filled the air. That is when we heard ambulances.”

He said residents of the surrounding area also reached the site to helped rescue workers. But later, the area was cordoned off by the police and other law-enforcement agencies.

Around eight bungalows of the newly constructed naval housing society were damaged following the crash. According to residents, eight to 10 labourers lived in the bungalows. But the bodies of only three labourers have been found from the debris so far.

Sixteen-year-old Muhammad Saeed said, “We heard a man crying for help. He was yelling ‘mujhe bachao’ [save me].” Saeed’s father went out to the balcony where he saw the plane falling. “People in our building started running downstairs in fear.”

Some successfully escaped the crash, while some didn’t.

“I saw a man trying to escape from the site as soon as the plane crashed. He tried speeding on his bicycle but he was trapped in the fire,” Sultan Ahmed, a naval police officer, told The Express Tribune. He was taken to Civil hospital where the doctors declared his condition critical.

The mosquito nets on the balconies facing the front of the buildings were burnt. “We could not look at the plane for about an hour [after the incident] because it was so hot outside. I saw flames touching the sky,” said Usama, a petty officer in the navy. “God has saved the people living here because the plane crashed just 30 metres away. If the plane had crashed here, hundreds of people would have lost their lives.”

The colony is divided into many blocks where around 4,000 employees of the Pakistan Navy reside.

Mujahid Nazir, a KDA employee who lives in Dalmia, said that he was going home with his six-year-old son on his motorcycle. They saw the Russain-made cargo plane on fire. “One side of the plane was on fire. I have never seen such a fire in my life,” said Nazir. He said that the plane crash shocked him and his son. “We are now afraid of flying.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.

LAHORE: The Sunni Ittehad Council’s long march has reached Lahore, while all roads leading to Data Darbar have been closed.

The SIC has organised the long march to protest against attacks on Shrines across the country.

The long march from Rawalpindi to Lahore had hit a major Punjab government roadblock on Saturday, as the planned mass protest failed to swell beyond a small trickle.

Sunni Ittehad leaders accused the provincial government of conducting a mass crackdown and arresting thousands of activists.

The government denied that any arrests had been made and insisted the police were there only to provide security and maintain law and order.

Senior Advisor to Chief Minister Punjab, Sardar Zulfiqar Khosa assured that no Ulema taking part in the march had been arrested.

Speaking to the media in Lahore, Khosa said the participants of the march had been provided with dinner on the order of Shahbaz Sharif. He said that strict security measures had been taken on the route of the long march and said that the participants had been stopped on Saturday night due to security concerns.