50,000 Kashmiris detained under draconian law

In Indian occupied Kashmir, over fifty thousand civilians have been detained under the draconian law, Public Safety Act, during the last twenty one years of the uprising against Indian occupation.

This was revealed by the President of the Bar Association of the occupied territory, Mian Abdul Qayoom, while talking to Kashmir Media Service in Srinagar, today. The draconian law authorizes the occupation authorities to detain a person for a period up to two years without producing him before a court of law. Mian Abdul Qayoom said that presently 800 to 900 persons were behind the bars under the Public Safety Act and it was invoked against 250 Kashmiris only in the current year.

He said during a period of one year, the draconian law was slapped seven times on APHC leader, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, eight times on Mussarat Alam Butt and four times each on Muhammad Yousaf Mir, Ghulam Nabi Sumji, Hafizullah and Bilal Siddiqi.

Later, Mian Abdul Qayoom and the vice president of the Bar, Aijaz Beidar visited Bandipore to express solidarity with the families of illegally detained civilians.

Meanwhile, Sopore remained tense for the third day, today, over the killing of a youth. The locals told mediamen that the killing was the handiwork of Indian troops. All markets and educational institutions remained closed and transport was off the road. A bomb blast occurred, today, in the Hari Singh High Street area of Srinagar without causing any causality. An army trooper committed suicide by hanging himself on a ceiling fan at an army camp in Udhampur. This has brought the number of such deaths amongst the troops to 176 since January 2007.

In London, the Executive Director of Kashmir Centre, Professor Nazir Ahmed Shawl, in a statement, deplored the silence of the international community over the discovery of unnamed graves in the occupied territory.

Why India hide bodies, secretly buried Mumbai militants

The stories out of Bharat (aka India) are not very clear about Mumbai. Conflicting news reports are still emanating out of Delhi which have shocked the media and given rise to speculation that the attackers were Bharati nationals. What began as simple rumors and fodder for conspiracy theorists have now become part of the mainstream media which is increasingly strident and curious about the unanswered questions.

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India sheepishly admits local connection in Mumbai attacks

MUMBAI: The bodies of the nine 26/11 Pakistani terrorists – which nobody, including Pakistan, wanted – have been disposed of in a top secret operation.

Maharashtra home minister R.R. Patil said on Tuesday the bodies of the nine terrorists, killed by Indian special forces during their three-day bloody siege of landmark areas of the city in November 2008, were quietly buried in January this year.

“I did not see any need to keep preserving the bodies for a longer time. So, we took the decision to bury the bodies,” he told the stunned members of the state legislative council here on Tuesday evening.

In view of the sensitivity of the issue and the fact that many Muslim organisations had opposed giving the dead terrorists a burial place anywhere in India, Patil said adequate care was taken to ensure that the matter remained a secret and the information did not leak out.

However, he did not mention the date on which the burial took place, or even the place where the bodies were buried.

Patil added that the decision was also prompted by the huge ongoing expense incurred on preserving the bodies in an air-conditioned room of the morgue in Sir J.J. Hospital, round-the-clock security deployed at the site, and other aspects.

Delhi lies about Mumbai exposed: All militants were Indian nationals–

For nearly 15 months, there were no claimants for the bodies of the nine terrorists who were killed by the security forces during the Nov 26-29, 2008, Mumbai terror attacks. Only one of their associates – Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab – was captured alive and he is currently awaiting judgment in the 26/11 trial.

The 10 gunmen killed 166 people in a series of coordinated attacks. Kasab remains lodged in the high-security Arthur Road Central Jail in an oval-shaped cell, and Special Judge M.L. Tahaliyani will deliver the verdict May 3.

Keeping the terrorists’ bodies for such a long time was considered without a precedent anywhere in the world. Kasab was the only one captured alive during the terrorist strikes that targeted two luxury hotels, the city’s main, historic train terminal, a hospital and a Jewish centre of worship.

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Early last year, the Muslim Council had flatly refused to allow the burial of the nine killed terrorists in the Marine Lines Bada Qabrastan cemetery. The council had also sent a message to all cemeteries in India that none of the terrorists’ bodies should be buried on Indian soil.

The influential Muslim Jama Masjid Trust, which runs the 7.5-acre Bada Qabrastan in south Mumbai, said it would also not permit the burial of the gunmen “because they were not true followers of Islam”. Since then both the Maharashtra government and police have been caught in a bind over what to do with the bodies. “We had informed the Pakistan government about the bodies long ago. However, there was no response from them so far,” Special Public Prosecutor for the 26/11 terror attacks trial Ujjwal Nikam had said in November 2009.

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Some outfits had even suggested after the terror siege that the bodies be dumped at the premises of the Pakistan high commission in New Delhi or thrown into the Arabian Sea. Shortly after the attackers were gunned down, their bodies were brought to the hospital where a team of doctors had performed autopsies and filed post-mortem reports with police.

Thereafter, the bodies had been embalmed and shifted to a separate room in the morgue, which was permanently sealed with round-the-clock security and temperatures maintained at a steady four degrees Celsius to prevent decomposition.
The room was out of bounds for all, barring those who had the relevant clearance from police headquarters.

Among those who viewed the bodies were the investigators from Mumbai Police, the state and central agencies, and representatives of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Many have suspected that Bharat has been hiding the facts of Mumbai. How could the gunmen enter the Taj Hotel when the front entrances are all cordoned off with metal detectors. The Taj owners clearly stated an inside job, where the militants were shown into the hotel through a maze of back doors and service entrances. Mr. Kasab the only surviving gunaman has stated that he went to Mumbai on a train and was being used as a patsy. Many of the witnesses were unable to recognize him a police lineup.

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Then there is the whole episode of Mr. Kasab and the miracle of surviving a perilous journey on a red dinghy that was able to evade the most fortified border in the world–hoodwinking the Indian Navy, the Coast Guards, and plethora of animal named forces like the Black panthers. Analysts also wonder who armed to the teeth militants were able to hail cabs and reach downtown Mumbai carrying AK-47s, RPGs, and ammunition.

It is also been alleged that all the other gunmen were Indians and Bharat has hidden their identity and their bodies to dowlplay the local angle of the mayhem in Mumbai.

Can the CIA sabotage Iran’s nuclear project?

WASHINGTON: The reported defection of an Iranian scientist to the United States has renewed speculation about a CIA plot to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme through covert action.

But it remains unclear whether Shahram Amiri, the young physics researcher who reportedly joined forces with the US spy agency, represents an intelligence coup for Washington or a minor setback for Tehran, former CIA officers said. ABC television reported that Amiri, who went missing without explanation in Saudi Arabia last year, had defected and resettled in the United States in cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Amiri, in his thirties, worked at Tehran’s Malek-Ashtar University of Technology, part of a network of research centers with close ties to Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards and the country’s weapons industry. The scientist did not appear to play a senior role in the country’s nuclear project, and his knowledge may have been confined to a single aspect of the programme.

“It’s really impossible to say how much of a window this kind of a defector could provide without knowing how much he was reading into aspects of the entire programme, as opposed to chipping away at one part of the programme,” CIA veteran Paul Pillar told AFP.

“One ought to be very cautious about how much a difference any one individual might make,” said Pillar, now at Georgetown University. Some media reports suggested the scientist may have helped inform the Americans about a secret enrichment site near Qom, which caused international outrage when it was revealed in September.

Amiri’s disappearance appeared to confirm reports in recent years that US intelligence agencies have tried to lure away key civilian and military figures to undercut Iran’s nuclear drive in an operation dubbed “Brain Drain.”

The fate of a former Iranian deputy defence minister who disappeared in Istanbul in 2007, General Ali Reza Asgari, remains unresolved, amid speculation he defected as well and offered his knowledge of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The suspected defections offer a glimpse into a secret struggle between Western intelligence agencies and Iran, with the United States and its allies working to delay Tehran’s nuclear project by clandestine means even as they seek international support for tougher sanctions.

“The one thing that we have done, and this has come out in the open press… is to feed faulty components into the supply chain for Iran’s nuclear weapons programme,” said Clare Lopez, who worked for the CIA during and after the Cold War. Working through a family of Swiss engineers, the CIA reportedly managed to provide Libya and Iran with flawed parts for several years, according to The New York Times and other media.

In 2006, a sabotaged power supply failed at the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, reportedly causing 50 centrifuges to explode and setting back Tehran’s nuclear fuel work.

Former intelligence officers said defections are a delicate, risky business, and it remained uncertain whether Amiri had cooperated with the Americans over a long period of time.

“By and large defections like this are what you call walk-ins, that is they come to you,” said Bruce Riedel, a retired CIA officer and fellow at The Brookings Institution think-tank. “Typically, a response for a walk-in is, ‘Hey wait, we rather you stay in place and provide an ongoing stream of intelligence.’” Iran remains a difficult target for US spies, as Washington has not had an embassy in Tehran for 30 years, cutting off opportunities to develop intelligence sources and contacts.

Moreover, Iran has honed an effective counterintelligence service with “a good track record” of exposing foreign espionage, Riedel said. Amiri could be a gold mine, offering a trove of information about the nuclear program, which US and European governments insist is a cover for a clandestine nuclear weapons project.

“The other alternative is we’re so desperate to gain information on the Iranian nuclear programme that we’ll take anything we can get,” Riedel said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.”

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=232660