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90 perish in twin plane crash in Russia Bangladesh simmers Aziz poised to become Pak PM as
Hussain resigns
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90 perish in twin plane crash in Russia
Moscow, August 25 ‘’The fact that both planes took off from one airport and disappeared from radars around the same time can show it was a planned action,’’ the Interfax news agency quoted an aviation source as saying. ‘’In such a situation one could not exclude a terrorist act.’’ Witnesses on the ground heard an explosion on board the second plane, a Tu-134 carrying 44 passengers and crew, just before it crashed near Tula, 150 km south of Moscow. There were no foreigners on board the planes, which both took off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport. News agencies quoted security officials as saying they could not rule out a terrorist act, while Rostov prosecutors opened a criminal probe into the crash of the Sibir Airlines Tu-154 en route to the Black Sea resort of Sochi. ‘’A minute before the plane disappeared from the radar screens the interior ministry received a report from an air traffic controller that there had been an attack on the crew,’’ Interfax quoted an Interior Ministry official as saying. A Sibir spokesman said, ‘’We are considering an act of terror as one possibility, especially after we received an automatically generated telegram from the Sochi air control centre that the plane had been hijacked.’’ The incidents came against a backdrop of mounting violence in Chechnya, where Moscow has been battling separatists for a decade.
— Reuters |
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Bangladesh
simmers Dhaka, August 25 A hitherto unknown Islamist outfit calling itself the “Hikmatul Jihad”, in an e-mail to a Bengali-language daily Prothom Alo yesterday, claimed responsibility for the weekend attack on the Awami League rally in which 20 persons were killed and warned that it would hit again within seven days. Bangladesh’s State Minister for Home Affairs Lutfozzaman Babar said the source of e-mail would be investigated. “Two experts will check the computer to track down the sender of e-mail and I hope we will succeed,” he told the Daily Star newspaper. Mr Saber Hossain Chowdhury, political advisor to the Awami League chief, said the party would take up the issue of Ms Sheikh Hasina’s security with the government. The attack has triggered a wave of activity in the opposition camp which has launched fresh attempts to forge a united front. The Awami League along with the Left wing 11-party alliance, Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal, has agreed to launch an “all-party action committee” to fight the government and the religious fundamentalists in the wake of the attack. Security personnel patrolled the deserted streets of Dhaka and other major cities today, a day after violent demonstrations rocked the country injuring at least 70 persons. Bus and train services came to a halt today, while domestic air services were also affected, officials said, but there were no immediate reports of violence. Business establishments, schools, private offices and shops were also closed. Ivy Rahman, who lost both her legs in the grenade attack, was the wife of veteran leader and former minister Zillur Rahman and was a close confidante of Ms Hasina. Awami League Chief and former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed survived the attack, but her hearing has been impaired.
— PTI |
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Aziz poised to become Pak PM as Hussain resigns Islamabad, August 25 Hussain announced his resignation in the 342-member National Assembly after which the federal cabinet was dissolved, outgoing Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said. He said election for the leader of the Assembly will be held on Friday in which the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) and its allies enjoying comfortable majority would field Aziz. The nomination for the post will be filed tomorrow. The new Prime Minister would take oath of office on Saturday and seek a vote of confidence of the House on the same day, Rashid said. Aziz (55) was inducted as Finance Minister by Musharraf after the 1999 military coup and held the post ever since.
— PTI |
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Ashish Kumar Sen writes from Washington Photographs of Iraqi prisoners being abused by their American jailers presented a snapshot of “deviant behaviour and a failure of military leadership and discipline,” an independent panel reported on
Tuesday. Abu Ghraib prison, located on the outskirts of Baghdad, was “chaos,” panel members said. But, they added, commanders on the ground and up the chain of command should have recognised the problems and corrected them. Former Defence Secretary James R. Schlesinger, chairman of the panel, said there were direct responsibilities up to the brigade level “because they did not adequately supervise what was going on at Abu Ghraib.” “In addition,” he said, “there was indirect responsibility at higher levels in that the weaknesses at Abu Ghraib were well-known and that corrective action could have been taken and should have been taken.” The panel noted that the events of October through December 2003 “on the night shift of Tier 1 at Abu Ghraib prison were acts of brutality and purposeless sadism.” “There was sadism that was certainly not authorised,” Mr Schlesinger said. “It was kind of like ‘animal house’ on the night shift.” New York-based Human Rights Watch acknowledged the panel’s criticism of top officials, but pointed out its failure to address government policy that may have led to the mistreatment and torture of detainees. Reed Brody, special counsel with Human Rights Watch, said: “The report seems to go out of its way not to find any relationship between Secretary Rumsfeld’s approval of interrogation techniques designed to inflict pain and humiliation and the widespread mistreatment and torture of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.” However, Mr Schlesinger noted that there was “no policy of abuse.” The panel’s report pointed out that senior officials repeatedly said that in Iraq the Geneva Convention would apply. The report focuses on the actions of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade and the 800th Military Police Brigade, which operated in Abu Ghraib. It fails, however, to examine in detail other detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though most deaths of detainees in US custody and many reported abuses occurred outside Abu Ghraib. Five detainees died from abuse during interrogations, the report said. None of the prisoners depicted in the photographs that were first published in April was being held for their intelligence value, Mr Schlesinger acknowledged. Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had offered to step down following the revelation of prisoner abuse in Iraq earlier this year. On Tuesday, Mr Schlesingersaid, “His resignation would be a boon to all of America’s enemies and, consequently, I think it would be a misfortune if it were to take place.” The ratio of US MPs to detainees was all out of proportion too, Mr. Schlesinger said. The report noted that the ratio of prisoners to military police officers was 75-to-1, versus 1-to-1 at Guantanamo
Bay. The MPs at Abu Ghraib “were undertrained for detention operations and they had arrived not in units and with equipment missing,” Mr Schlesinger said. The panel said 300 abuse cases had come under investigation, a number about three times greater than previous US military estimates. Of 155 completed investigations, the report added, 66 have resulted in determinations of abuse - 55 of them in Iraq, three in Afghanistan and eight at Guantanamo Bay. “What is needed is real accountability for these crimes,” said Mr Brody. |
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Pakistan's outgoing PM says chances of war with India have
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