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Iraqi prison abuse trial put on hold UK opens probe into deaths of
48 Iraqis Two Iraqis killed in bombings Militants claim to have kidnapped Iranian diplomat Suicide bomber held in UK
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Bill to limit aid to Pak tabled in Congress Famine leaves 152 dead in Zimbabwe city
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Iraqi prison abuse trial put on hold Fort Bragg, August 8 Lawyers for England yesterday renewed a request for top US Government and military officials, including Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to be called to testify at the hearing into prisoner abuse that shocked the Arab world and harmed US efforts to halt a bloody insurgency in Iraq. England, is charged with 19 counts of prisoner abuse, committing indecent acts and disobeying orders. She faces up to 38 years in prison if convicted. England’s lawyers have asked the court to call more than 50 additional witnesses. The court has heard from 25 in the five days of hearings which started on Tuesday. The four days of testimony provided the defence with new information as lawyers try to build a case that England was following orders and the US military chain of command was involved in abuse at Abu Ghraib. The court heard tales of abuse of Iraqi prisoners from US Military Police and military intelligence officers who served at Abu Ghraib. It also heard sometimes contradictory evidence as to whether intelligence officers were involved in it, as the defence contends. A military criminal investigator said England admitted during interrogation that she ‘’stepped on’’ Iraqi prisoners and said no one ordered her to do it, contradicting her public claims. Prosecutors pursued a line of questioning that indicated they were trying to show the abuse was carried out by a small band of rogue soldiers, as President George W. Bush suggested.
— Reuters |
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UK opens probe into deaths of 48 Iraqis London, August 8 After mounting allegations from lawyers and human rights groups that abuses were being ignored, the Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram ordered all military units, that have served in Iraq, to check their records and produce a full list of every incident where an Iraqi was killed, ‘The Independent on Sunday’ reported. In his last official figure to MPs in June, Ingram had said that 74 cases of alleged abuse, accidental deaths such as fatalities in crashes, and unlawful killings had been investigated in Iraq. Of those, 37 involved suspicious deaths. The investigations have been opened into the deaths of 48 Iraqis since May last year, a jump of nearly a third from the previously disclosed official figures, the paper said. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) also admitted on Friday that armed forces police has investigated, or is still looking into, a total of 94 cases of alleged deaths in custody, illegal shootings, injuries and suspected ill-treatment involving British troops. The MoD’s search for unreported deaths, expected to take several months, is the latest in a series of concessions being made by the government over the armed forces’ rules and policies in Iraq. According to the report, the MoD has quietly stripped regimental commanders in Iraq of their right to block police inquiries into suspicious deaths in February. Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon is under intense pressure from Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith to abolish the right of commanding officers to block prosecutions. The report said the MoD is overhauling the use of “goodwill payments” to the families of dead civilians. This follows a series of controversies about low sums of money given in “ad hoc” compensation deals, including £ 390 payment to the parents of an eight-year-old girl fatally wounded by a British Army bullet. In a further concession, ministers have also ordered the Royal Military Police to open an investigation into any death of an Iraqi, including the deaths of alleged insurgents killed in battles with troops. The MoD said this policy accounted for many, but not all, of the new cases under investigation. The Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price said the latest figure was the highest number of deaths involving a British military peace-keeping operation or occupation for decades, and demanded an independent inquiry. Claims that dozens of Iraqi deaths have gone unreported or were not independently probed are now a major cause of concern for human rights groups, becoming a key issue at last month’s High Court hearing into the conduct of British troops.
— PTI |
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Two Iraqis killed in bombings Kirkuk, August 8 The children, aged five to 10, were on their way to a playground when they accidentally stepped on a roadside bomb, said Col Sirhat Qadir of Iraqi police in the city. Meanwhile, the body of a prominent Kurdish businessman in Kirkuk was found stabbed to death in the predominantly Arab town of Al-Riad, west of the city, according to Lieutenant Col Imad al-Obeidi. In Baquba, an Iraqi national guardsmen died and another was injured late Saturday as security forces were attempting to defuse a roadside bomb on the road to the village of Kanaan south-east of the city. In Baghdad, Iraq’s interim government reinstated the death penalty today for a limited range of crimes including murder, kidnapping and drug offences, an official said.
— Agencies |
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Militants
claim to have kidnapped Iranian diplomat Baghdad, August 8 The video showed a bearded man identified as Faridoun Jihani speaking to the camera, though his voice was not audible. The video also showed nine forms of his identification, as well as his passport and a business card identifying him as the “consul for the Islamic Republic of Iran in Karbala,” a southern Iraqi city. The kidnappers, who called themselves the “Islamic Army in Iraq,”’ accused Mr Jihani of provoking sectarian war in Iraq and they warned Iran not to interfere in Iraq’s affairs, according to Al-Arabiya. The kidnappers did not appear to threaten Mr Jihani and made no demands, according to the report. Mr Jihani would be the second senior diplomat taken hostage in Iraq in recent weeks. Mohammed Mamdouh Helmi Qutb, an Egyptian diplomat, was abducted on July 23 outside a mosque in Baghdad and freed unharmed on July 26.
— AP |
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Suicide
bomber held in UK London, August 8 Among the two was a would-be suicide bomber who had failed to get asylum in UK, The Sunday Times reported. The documents were found in two briefcases that had been left by the police which searched the house in Willesden Green, northwest London. Among the papers was a picture of a man dressed in military fatigues cradling an AK-47 rifle and letters written on notepaper headed
Al-Quds Brigade, a West Asian terrorist group. A copy of a statement sent to the Home Office by a failed asylum seeker claiming he had trained as a suicide bomber with the radical Islamic group Hamas was also found. The police refused to say why the documents had been left behind in their series of high-profile raids on Tuesday against suspected Al-Qaida terrorists at addresses across Britain. A 27-year-old occupant of the flat had admitted to the Home Office that he had been trained to use weapons by a Palestinian militant group. But his asylum application was refused last July because the Home Office found his claims “implausible”.
— PTI |
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Attacks on Pervez, Aziz: Al-Qaida man held Islamabad, August 8 Qari Saifullah Akhtar, has been described as the ‘operational head of Al-Qaida’. He was caught in Dubai on Friday after he was tracked down by Pakistani intelligences officials. They had acted on a tip off provided by the captured Al-Qaida militants in Pakistan, he said. Akhtar was also a leader of the radical Islamic group Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami. He was handed over to Pakistani security officials by Dubai for interrogation and detention following a request from Islamabad, Ahmed said. “Yes, we can confirm that we have Qari Saifullah,” the Information Minister said, without specifying when he was handed over to Pakistan. The security officials here would probe his alleged involvement in the twin-attack on Musharraf last December and recent suicide attack on Aziz. They would also try to get an insight into the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and Taliban chief Mullah Omar. Pakistani officials believe that Akhtar knew about the hideouts of Bin Laden and Omar. He was believed to be with both the fugitives in Afghanistan at the time of the US-led war against Taliban in 2001. He had later fled to Saudi Arabia and then to the United Arab Emirates. Akhtar used to run one of Al-Qaida’s training camps in Afghanistan.
— PTI |
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Bill to limit aid to Pak tabled in Congress Washington, August 8 The Bill has been referred to the Congressional Committee. It says that the President may not provide more than 75 per cent of the US assistance to Pakistan unless he can certify that
Islamabad has halted any cooperation with any state in the development of nuclear or missile technology, material or equipment that is useful for the development of weapons of mass destruction. It also wants the Administration to state that Islamabad is fully sharing with the USA all information relevant to the nuclear proliferation network. However, in view of the strong support by President George W. Bush for Pakistan President
Musharraf, the Bill may face some resistance. — PTI |
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Famine leaves 152 dead in Zimbabwe city Harare, August 8 The weekly independent Standard newspaper quoted from records of the Bulawayo city councils city Health Department records as saying that 29 persons had died of malnutrition in July. It brings to 152 the number of famine-related deaths reported in Bulawayo this year. The latest deaths come after orders by President Robert Mugabes government to Western aid agencies to end famine relief operations.
Mugabes critics say they fear he plans to use food as a political weapon to force starving people to vote for his ruling
ZANU (PF) party in parliamentary elections scheduled for March next year.
— DPA |
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Poor Nepalese trade kidneys for money Shikharpur, August 8 The scenic beauty of the area hides an ugly reality symbolised by an eight inch scar near Tamang’s abdomen. The gaunt 42-year-old, who looks a decade older, sold a kidney in 2000 to raise money to pay off a family debt and buy a piece of land in the village of Shikharpur, 60 km east of Kathmandu. Tamang, who is unemployed, received Nepali Rs 70,000 for his kidney, cleared his family’s debt and gave the remainder to a broker to buy his dream plot of land for farming. The broker disappeared with the money. “I’m finished. I lost a kidney and I don’t have the land I paid for,” he said. Tamang is not the only person to have sold a kidney in Nepal, one of the world’s 10 poorest countries. There are 33 others in the village of some 3,000 residents who have sold their kidneys to either rich Nepalese or Indians who are ready to pay up to Nepali Rs 180,000 to brokers to buy a kidney for themselves or for their relatives. In Nepal and more economically developed India — where demand for healthy kidneys is high and medical facilities are available for kidney transplants — it is illegal to sell or buy the organs. The offence is punishable by fines and jail sentences of up to five years, although in Nepal one can legally donate a kidney to a relative who urgently needs the organ to save his or her life. But with hundreds of people in the region in desperate need of kidney transplants, many choose the illegal route and deals are done in secrecy in both countries, with middlemen scouring villages looking for donors. “There are no complaints in any court of law involving the sale of kidneys,” said a Nepalese official. Poverty in Nepal — which drives thousands of young
Nepalese to seek jobs in India as private guards, maids and army soldiers — also propels the kidney trade. Locals say one reason why so many people have sold their kidneys in Shikharpur is its high level of unemployment, backwardness.
— Reuters |
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