Giving a new twist to last month's Karachi bombings that claimed nearly 140 lives, former premier Benazir Bhutto has said that a "child suicide bomber" followed by a car bomb might have been used in an attempt to assassinate her.
"Although it remains difficult to know for certain, I doubt that a suicide bomber was involved in the attack on me. I suspect, after talking to some of the injured, that the terrorists used a 'small child' as a ploy to get to me," Bhutto wrote in commentary for CNN.
"They (terrorists) were trying to hoist the child -- dressed in the colours of my party's flag -- onto my truck," Bhutto said, adding failing to do so they dropped the child near her vehicle.
"Some witnesses said the child had been rigged as a human bomb. I can't be sure. What followed was a massive explosion, killing scores immediately, tearing many bodies in half and sending blood, gore and flames up into the vehicle," she said.
"In less than a minute a second bomb -- reports later suggested a car bomb -- went off," she wrote.
Bhutto survived unhurt when the blasts killing nearly 140 people took place near her armoured truck in a huge procession she led in Karachi after setting foot on Pakistani soil on October 18 for the first time in eight years.
Questioning as to why the investigation were initially given to a police officer who was present when her husband was nearly tortured to death in 1999, she said the most worrying was the "adamant rejection by Islamabad of any assistance from the state-of-art forensic teams from FBI and Scotland Yard.
"There are precedents in Pakistan for such international assistance. Such teams were called in to investigate the mysterious and sudden death of Army Chief General Asif Nawaz and the Egyptian Embassy bombing in the '90s," Bhutto said.
She had called in international experts when her brother Murtaza was killed in what she said: "I believed was a conspiracy to destabilise my government in 1996."
But she absolved President Pervez Musharraf of a hand in it, saying the "sham" investigation of the massacre and the attempt by the ruling party to politically capitalise on this catastrophe are discomforting, but do not suggest his direct involvement.
It has now been more than two weeks since the "horrific assassination attempt" against her and the police have still not filed her complaint, she said, adding that they filed their own report without taking statements from eyewitnesses on the truck targeted.
"Soon thereafter, I was asked by authorities not to travel in cars with tinted windows -- which protected me from identification by terrorists -- or travel with privately armed guards," Bhutto said.
"I began to feel the net was being tightened around me when police security outside my home in Karachi was reduced, even as I was told that other assassination plots were in the offing," she wrote in the commentary.
But she said she refused to holed up in her home a virtual prisoner and went to her ancestral village of Larkana to pray at my father's grave.
She asked "why had the street lights been turned off? Was that intended to prevent my security from clearly seeing any approaching dangers? Is there any truth to the report that a high government official ordered the lights turned off "to prevent her getting so much television coverage"?
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Webinfosys's Local News : Bhutto suspects 'child suicide bomber' was used to kill her
Webinfosys's Local News : Pakistan police baton-charge, arrest lawyers
Pakistani police on Monday baton-charged and arrested more than 100 lawyers at protests in at least two cities against a state of emergency imposed by President Pervez Musharraf, witnesses said.
The incidents in the southern port city of Karachi and in Rawalpindi, a northern garrison town, came a day after security forces rounded up 500 opposition activists and attorneys.
Police and paramilitary soldiers sealed off the high court in Karachi and barred journalists and lawyers from entering, before charging at lawyers who were outside the building, lawyers and witnesses said.
"It has never happened in the history of Pakistan when such a huge number of lawyers have been arrested," a former provincial High Court judge, Rashid Razvi, told reporters.
"According to my information more than 100 lawyers have been arrested in Karachi after police foiled their attempt to hold a bar association meeting in the court," he said.
Senior lawyer Akhtar Hussain told AFP earlier that police arrested at least 50 lawyers and then "whisked them away in waiting vans," he said.
Karachi police also cordoned off the house of the Sindh high court's former chief justice Sabihuddin Ahmed, who had been removed under the emergency rule, and arrested his son during the protests, witnesses said.
Two other judges who refused to take an oath under Musharraf's order for emergency rule and the suspension of the constitution were turned back when they reached the high court.
"We have been ordered to remain on duty here, we cannot comment on arrests," a police offficer said, requesting not to be identified by name.
"It is the worst case in the judicial history of Pakistan. The situtaion clearly proves that no uniform ruler can give democracy," Razvi said.
Another half a dozen lawyers were "mercilessly beaten" when they chanted anti-government slogans at a court in Rawalpindi, lawyer Mudassir Saeed said.
Police ordered journalists at the scene not to take pictures.
At least 10 lawyers were arrested in raids conducted in the northwestern city of Peshawar overnight, police said. One was a lawyer who had sprayed a black substance in the face of a state attorney who was defending the legality of Musharraf's October 6 election victory in the supreme court last month.
Roads in the capital Islamabad were blocked to prevent lawyers getting to the Supreme Court, where the legal community also planned rallies against the state of emergency announced by Musharraf on Saturday.
Lawyers were gathering in the second largest city of Lahore ahead of a planned protest rally and also in northwestern Peshawar.
The incidents in the southern port city of Karachi and in Rawalpindi, a northern garrison town, came a day after security forces rounded up 500 opposition activists and attorneys.
Police and paramilitary soldiers sealed off the high court in Karachi and barred journalists and lawyers from entering, before charging at lawyers who were outside the building, lawyers and witnesses said.
"It has never happened in the history of Pakistan when such a huge number of lawyers have been arrested," a former provincial High Court judge, Rashid Razvi, told reporters.
"According to my information more than 100 lawyers have been arrested in Karachi after police foiled their attempt to hold a bar association meeting in the court," he said.
Senior lawyer Akhtar Hussain told AFP earlier that police arrested at least 50 lawyers and then "whisked them away in waiting vans," he said.
Karachi police also cordoned off the house of the Sindh high court's former chief justice Sabihuddin Ahmed, who had been removed under the emergency rule, and arrested his son during the protests, witnesses said.
Two other judges who refused to take an oath under Musharraf's order for emergency rule and the suspension of the constitution were turned back when they reached the high court.
"We have been ordered to remain on duty here, we cannot comment on arrests," a police offficer said, requesting not to be identified by name.
"It is the worst case in the judicial history of Pakistan. The situtaion clearly proves that no uniform ruler can give democracy," Razvi said.
Another half a dozen lawyers were "mercilessly beaten" when they chanted anti-government slogans at a court in Rawalpindi, lawyer Mudassir Saeed said.
Police ordered journalists at the scene not to take pictures.
At least 10 lawyers were arrested in raids conducted in the northwestern city of Peshawar overnight, police said. One was a lawyer who had sprayed a black substance in the face of a state attorney who was defending the legality of Musharraf's October 6 election victory in the supreme court last month.
Roads in the capital Islamabad were blocked to prevent lawyers getting to the Supreme Court, where the legal community also planned rallies against the state of emergency announced by Musharraf on Saturday.
Lawyers were gathering in the second largest city of Lahore ahead of a planned protest rally and also in northwestern Peshawar.
Webinfosys's Local News : Delhi HC dismisses plea for encryption of live feed of matches
NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Monday dismissed a petition of Nimbus Communication and BCCI, seeking encryption of the former's live feed of cricket matches to public broadcaster Prasar Bharati.
Dismissing the petition, Justice S Ravindra Bhat said: "There is no legal provision under the Sports Act, Cable TV Network Act or the guidelines to direct for encryption of the live feed."
The order assumes significance in view of the on-going cricket series between India and Pakistan.
In the petition, Nimbus Communication and the Board of Cricket for Control in India (BCCI) had contended that live feed was being picked up by cable operators, resulting in huge revenue losses.
Prasar Bharati, however, had contended that the private broadcasters, who share live feed under the Sports Act (Mandatory Sharing of Feed), did not have legal right to ask for encryption of feed.
On October 22, the High Court had sought the Centre and Prasar Bharati's response to the petition.
Nimbus is the official broadcaster of all cricket matches to be played in the country till 2010.
However, the government had earlier brought out an Act which made it mandatory for private broadcasters to share live feed of all ODIs with public broadcaster Doordarshan (DD).
Dismissing the petition, Justice S Ravindra Bhat said: "There is no legal provision under the Sports Act, Cable TV Network Act or the guidelines to direct for encryption of the live feed."
The order assumes significance in view of the on-going cricket series between India and Pakistan.
In the petition, Nimbus Communication and the Board of Cricket for Control in India (BCCI) had contended that live feed was being picked up by cable operators, resulting in huge revenue losses.
Prasar Bharati, however, had contended that the private broadcasters, who share live feed under the Sports Act (Mandatory Sharing of Feed), did not have legal right to ask for encryption of feed.
On October 22, the High Court had sought the Centre and Prasar Bharati's response to the petition.
Nimbus is the official broadcaster of all cricket matches to be played in the country till 2010.
However, the government had earlier brought out an Act which made it mandatory for private broadcasters to share live feed of all ODIs with public broadcaster Doordarshan (DD).
Webinfosys's Local News : Pak's nuclear bomb may fall into wrong hands: Report
NEW YORK: Nuclear-armed Pakistan is teetering on the verge of chaos after the imposition of Emergency and US officials fear that the result could be every American's nightmare -- nuclear material or know-how, or even a nuclear bomb, falling into the hands of terrorists.
"If you were to look around the world for where Al-Qaida is going to find its bomb, it's right in their backyard," Bruce Riedel, the former senior director for South Asia on the National Security Council, was quoted as saying by Newsweek.
General Pervez Musharraf, who led a military coup in 1999, imposed a state of Emergency in nuclear-armed Pakistan on Saturday in response to what he said was a hostile judiciary and the growing menace of Al-Qaida and pro-Taliban militants.
US Senator Joseph Biden has said General Musharraf's decision to declare a state of Emergency and suspend the constitution underscores the need for the United States to move from a Musharraf policy to a Pakistan policy.
President George W Bush should make it clear to General Musharraf the risks to US-Pakistani relations if he does not restore the Constitution, permit free and fair elections and take off his uniform as promised. Then, we have to build a new relationship with the Pakistani people, he said.
The dilemma facing the "democracy crusader" President Bush, Newsweek says, is that Washington is left not many friends to call in Pakistan -- "perhaps the number one generator of terrorism in the world" -- after propping up President Pervez Musharraf for six years.
"There is perhaps no place on earth that more powerfully validates Bush's idea that democracy can be a cure for terrorism than Pakistan. And there is perhaps no place on earth that so powerfully exposes his occasional hypocrisy in failing to push for that policy," the magazine says.
"If you were to look around the world for where Al-Qaida is going to find its bomb, it's right in their backyard," Bruce Riedel, the former senior director for South Asia on the National Security Council, was quoted as saying by Newsweek.
General Pervez Musharraf, who led a military coup in 1999, imposed a state of Emergency in nuclear-armed Pakistan on Saturday in response to what he said was a hostile judiciary and the growing menace of Al-Qaida and pro-Taliban militants.
US Senator Joseph Biden has said General Musharraf's decision to declare a state of Emergency and suspend the constitution underscores the need for the United States to move from a Musharraf policy to a Pakistan policy.
President George W Bush should make it clear to General Musharraf the risks to US-Pakistani relations if he does not restore the Constitution, permit free and fair elections and take off his uniform as promised. Then, we have to build a new relationship with the Pakistani people, he said.
The dilemma facing the "democracy crusader" President Bush, Newsweek says, is that Washington is left not many friends to call in Pakistan -- "perhaps the number one generator of terrorism in the world" -- after propping up President Pervez Musharraf for six years.
"There is perhaps no place on earth that more powerfully validates Bush's idea that democracy can be a cure for terrorism than Pakistan. And there is perhaps no place on earth that so powerfully exposes his occasional hypocrisy in failing to push for that policy," the magazine says.
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