Two Muttahida men among three killed, Baldia tense
KARACHI: Three including
two Muttahida activists were killed while three vehicles
and four shops were burnt completely when the brothers of
a former Muttahida worker reacted after they found the
bullet riddled body of their abducted brother from a
gutter in Baldia Town, witnesses and officials said on
Thursday.
According to residents
and witnesses, Shafique Chand, a former activist of
Muttahida, was abducted some five days ago. His three
brothers, Shahid, Salim, and Aslam besides launching a
search for Shafique also informed the police about the
abduction.
Violence started when
brothers of Shafique, found him dead lying in a gutter
with severe torture wounds and bullet holes, in Anjam
Colony. In reaction they reached the residence of Yaquoob
Madda, an activist of Muttahida and brother of Ghaffar
Madda, who was killed along with a wanted accused Farooq
Dada in a highly controversial police encounter years
ago.
Perceiving the
situation, Yaquoob along with his family left his home
and reached Turk Mohallah and later reached his close
associate Shaukat Lala's house in Qazi Muhallah. When
Shafique's brothers and their supporters did not find
Yaqoob there, they set the house and two motorbikes on
fire.
They later reached
Shaukat Lala's house in Qazi Mohallah where Yaqoob had
taken shelter and shot both of them dead and torched a
Suzuki High-roof van.
Later, the highly
charged heirs of Shafique, reached the Cassette Chowk and
set four shops owned by Yaqoob, in which a PCO, Snooker
Club, Lucky Centre and a Pan Shop were running, on fire.
Police sources claimed
that those who were killed included a wanted criminal but
the party alleged that hard core criminals gunned down
their peaceful and innocent activists.
MUTTAHIDA: Muttahida
Coordination Committee alleged, "Criminals are
roaming freely within the entire Baldia Town and the
police and paramilitary Rangers are not taking any action
against them. Today, they called Shaukat outside his home
and gunned him down and also killed Yaquoob Madda, the
brother of slain party worker Ghaffar Madda. The
Coordination Committee demanded of the government and
President Musharraf to arrest the killers at the
earliest.
SHOT DEAD: An alleged
motorbike snatcher was shot dead while his accomplice
managed to flee, dodging the police during a shootout
here on Thursday, officials said. They said the two armed
men intercepted one Salim who was driving to CP Barar
Society on a motorbike (KAV-1493).
Witnessing the scene, a
passer-by informed the nearby Bahadurabad police station.
Police asked the bandits to surrender but they started
firing. The police returned the fire as a result of which
one of the accused killed on the spot while the other
managed to flee.
The police identified
the deceased as Iqbal and recovered a pistol from him.
The body was shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical
centre for autopsy. Police have lodged the case and were
investigating.
ACCIDENT: A pedestrian
Haji Sultan was killed by an unknown vehicle in SITE. His
corpse was shifted to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.
FIRE: A fire erupted in
a parked minibus (JA-1211) in Jamshed Quarters area. It
was parked in front of Quarter No F-136 near Central
Jail. Fire tenders reached the scene and doused the
flames.
ROBBERIES: Bandits
barged into Nadeem Saeed's house in Darakhshan police
limits and looted cash and jewellery; cash, watches and
other items from Muhammad Sarwar's house in Quaidabad;
cash from Abid Husain in Korangi.
Carjackers took away 11
vehicles, including five cars and six motorbikes from
different city parts before eluding easily.
FIRs against Badin SSP, others to be registered: SHC
HYDERABAD, Nov 22: Sindh High Court Hyderabad circuit bench here on Thursday disposed of a constitutional petition praying for registration of a murder case against SSP Badin Tahir Naveed
, DSP Aslam Rajput, SHOs of Matli and Tando Ghulam Ali police stations and inspector Ghulam Murtaza Mirani of Badin CIA centre in a custodial killing case, after present SHO Matli agreed that an FIR, containing allegations made by the petitioner, would be registered and investigations will start immediately.
The order was passed on the constitutional petition filed by Moula Bux Khaskheli, a resident of village Gullan Khaskheli of Matli taluka in Badin district.
Advocate Ayaz Latif Palijo represented the petitioner who cited SSP Badin Tahir Naveed, SHO Matli Nand Lal, Nazir Abro and Aslam Rajput of Tando Ghulam Ali police , Ghulam Murtaza of Badin CIA centre and DIG police Hyderabad range as respondents.
The petitioner claimed on September 20 a police party of Matli and Tando Ghulam Ali police headed by Aslam Rajput, Nand Lal and Nazir Abro raided his house without any search warrant and humiliated his family members including women. He added he was arrested by the police in a case of motorcycle snatching, kept at Tando Ghulam Ali and Matli police stations and Phalkara police post for two weeks and subjected to torture.
He alleged his brother Ghulam Ali Khaskheli was picked up without any search warrant on September 28 by a police party headed by DSP Aslam Rajput, SHOs Nazir Abro and Nand Lal and inspector Ghulam Murtaza Mirani who told the arrested man: "You have not learnt any lesson from arrest of your brother. Now we will teach you a final lesson."
He charged Nand Lal and Nazir Abro aimed guns at the family members when they tried to protect Ghulam Ali and added the police officials said he (petitioner) had annoyed the SSP by daring to snatch motorcycle from his acquaintance.
The petitioner claimed the police officials took away the family including women in police mobile in presence of villagers and released them after Rs11,000 were paid to them.
He informed the court on September 29 SSP Tahir Naveed visited the police station, he himself and on his instructions the respondent officials and other policemen applied ruthless methods of torture on him and his brother, inquiring about the snatched motorcycle.
He said when they told police they had nothing to do with the incident of motorcycle snatching, the severity of torture against them increased making them unconscious.
He said when he gained senses he saw his brother hanging upside down in the room of Phalkara police post. Ghulam Ali had visible marks of violence on his body and was crying due to terrible pain, asking for help, he added.
Moula Bux alleged on September 30 he found the body of his brother Ghulam Ali lying in a pool of blood on the ground of police station and saw the respondents discussing the disposal of the body.
He said during midnight SSP Badin called him and said the police were ready to pay him the compensation of Rs500,000 if he agreed on the contents of the FIR prepared by the police and if not they could also get rid of him the same way.
Due to interference of some notables the police shifted the petitioner to Matli taluka hospital on October 3 from where he was sent to civil hospital Hyderabad.
He said the police initially refused to lodge FIR but in the wake of public pressure and clamour raised by newspapers they lodged FIR on the complaint of Noor Mohammad, the petitioner's brother, but despite his insistence the name of the SSP was not included in it.
He said when he approached police for registration of FIR for keeping him in illegal confinement and subjecting him to torture they refused.
On October 5 the partly decomposed body of Ghulam Ali, having marks of torture and tied with a rock, was recovered from Rohri Canal. The place from where the body was found was pointed out by SHO Nand Lal.
The petitioner said they tried to approach the district administration and high-ups for the FIR and inclusion of SSP's name but to no avail.
The petitioner charged the police officers of Badin district had a very bad record in terms of criminal investigations and torture and they proudly say nothing happened when Rafiq Khoso and Khadim Junejo were found dead in police custody.
He said since he had sent telegrams to high-ups the SSP had become very annoyed and had started a series of illegal actions and conspiracies against him, his colleagues and office bearers of Khaskheli Jamaat.
The petitioner prayed the court to direct the respondents to lodge FIR against SSP Badin Tahir Naveed, DSP Aslam Rajput, SHOs Nand Lal and Nazeer Ahmed and inspector Ghulam Murtaza Mirani for offences mentioned earlier.
He requested the court to direct SSP Badin to refrain from harassing him and his relatives and stop interfering in investigation of Ghulam Ali murder case.
Assistant Advocate General Rasheed Qureshi, who was present with present SHO Matli Mohammad Ramzan, said that the latter agreed a FIR containing allegations made by petitioner would be registered immediately after which the police will start investigation.
Qadri wants strict laws to check extremism
LAHORE, Nov 22: Pakistan Awami Tehrik chairman Dr Tahirul Qadri has urged the need for framing strict laws to curb extremism and sectarianism.
Under the present situation, it was condemnable to endanger the country by promoting extremist tendencies and instigating people, he said in a statement here on Thursday.
Dr Qadri said it was necessary to take steps to curb sectarianism and violence to restore peace in the country.
Besieged Pakistanis' plight may affect DPs
MINGORA, Nov 22: People are planning to hold the pro-Northern Alliance refugees in different parts of Mingora captive following reports that about 3,000 fighters of Tehrik-i-Nifazi-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi have gone missing in Afghanistan.
In some parts of upper Dir refugees have been given stern warning to help recover the missing people.
People have been demanding of the government to use its influence for the release of Pakistanis besieged in Afghanistan.
The total number of missing Pakistani Mujahideen has not be been confirmed as the people had crossed into Afghanistan under the aegis of many Jihadi groups. However, the number of the missing TNSM activists is stated to be about 3,000. However, the TNSM is tight-lipped about the number of its missing fighters.
TNSM spokesman Mohammad Abdullah told this correspondent: "We are trying to track down the missing volunteers. We are in contact with the leaders of the Northern Alliance, including Prof Burhanuddin Rabbani, Gen Rasheed Dostum and Gen Fahim."
He ruled out any revolt by some of the aides to TNSM Amir Maulana Sufi Muhammad, and termed all reports in this regard baseless.
The arrest of Sufi Mohammed, he said, had created unrest among the party workers. He said that a strategy to ensure the release of Sufi Mohammed would be adopted at a meeting of Shoora to be held soon.
Answering a question, the spokesman put the total number of TNSM activists in besieged Kunduz at approximately 1,000.
The spokesman dispelled the impression that TNSM workers had gone to fight against the Northern Alliance, saying they were only fighting against the United States and its allies.
TNSM: Sufi's jail term denied; 37 activists released
SADDA: The political
administration of Kurram Agency has contradicted the news
item appearing in a section of the press regarding three
years' imprisonment to Maulana Sufi Muhammad and his 30
supporters.
Clarifying the report
the administration said here on Thursday that there was
no truth in it and the news was baseless and false. The
TNSM activists were arrested under 40 FCR and they could
be released any time, it said.
Meanwhile, the political
administration of Kurram Agency released 37 activists of
Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) from
Parachinar jail.
Genocide of Pakistanis in Kunduz feared
PESHAWAR, Nov 22: Two former speakers of the NWFP Assembly belonging to PPP, Barrister Masood Kausar, and Abdul Akber Khan, have expressed their fear of genocide of Pakistanis and Pukhtoons in Afghanistan
especially in Kunduz and have asked the government to make efforts for safe exit of these people from the besieged areas.
Commenting over the siege of Kunduz and war on various fronts, including Kandahar, the PPP leaders said the Northern Alliance forces had been misled about true identity of these Pakistanis present in Afghanistan.
Mr Kausar said that most of the Pakistanis were the misled-lot who were asked to go to Afghanistan to fight against the US and its allies. He said they were not informed that the Taliban were in fact fighting against the Northern Alliance and not the American ground troops.
Mr Kausar said the Northern Alliance should understand the fact that these Pakistanis were not against them and they had only gone to Afghanistan for safeguarding its sovereignty. He said that the Pakistan government should prevail on the United Nations and other forces to make the safe exit of Pakistanis possible from the troubled areas.
Abdul Akber said that if the trapped Pakistanis were against the Northern Alliance they would have gone to Afghanistan in 1996 and not now. "These are not Al-Qaeda people and in fact they are innocent Pakistani youngsters who were misled by some of their leaders in backward areas," he added. Moreover, they said that most of the besieged people in Kunduz were Pukhtoon settlers who had got nothing to do with the Taliban movement or Al-Qaeda.
They warned of severe repercussions if the Northern Alliance went ahead with the genocide of those people, fearing that the fall out of any step aimed at ethnic cleansing would be more severe in Pakistan.
Arms Act to apply to tribal areas
ISLAMABAD, Nov 22: Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider on Thursday said the government intended to extend Arms Control Act to the tribal areas and 'B' areas of Balochistan.
Speaking on the "arms destruction day" at Police Lines, the minister said there would be no exception to anybody in the deweaponization campaign.
Expressing the determination to eliminate illegal arms manufacturing, he said this big source of arms manufacturing could not be ignored. The government, he added, had already controlled the sale of arms from Darra Adamkhel with the help of the provincial government.
Mr Haider said the Federally Administered Tribal Areas would be brought under a discipline. He said the government had collected 124,000 weapons of different categories during the campaign against illicit arms. The campaign was being carried in low key and would continue till the elimination of illegal weapons.
Pakistan closes Taliban Embassy
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on
Thursday sought International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) help to save Pakistanis trapped in Kunduz after
Islamabad announced the closure of the Afghan Embassy,
ending the uneasy diplomatic relations which existed with
the ousted Taliban government.
The decision came a day
after the United States government told the Pervez
Musharraf regime that there was no use for the embassy
anymore as the eight aid workers had been released.
Announcing the decision at a regular Foreign Office
briefing on Thursday, spokesman Aziz Khan said:
"Yes, we have decided to close down the Afghan
Embassy and the accredited staff has been given
reasonable time to leave. This is not a new subject but
has been under review for the last 20 days. As the
situation has changed it was a gradual step to close the
mission and all submissions. Yesterday, we decided to
close the Afghan Embassy in Pakistan and the ambassador
was notified."
Khan said that
Washington's statement in this regard also stated how in
the past the embassy had a need to remain open and this
was not the case now. Washington made it clear that since
the foreign aid workers had been released, it saw no
justification for the presence of the Afghan Embassy and
Pakistan obliged.
ICRC concerned about trapped fighters
ISLAMABAD: The
International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday
it had expressed fears to both the United States and the
Northern Alliance about thousands of Afghan and foreign
Taliban fighters trapped in the city of Kunduz.
But Jakob Kellenberger,
head of the ICRC, stressed the ICRC's role was protecting
prisoners, not negotiating surrenders. "We are very
worried," the visiting head of the Swiss-based
organisation, which specialises in protection of people
during war, said in a briefing.
"We have expressed
our worries about the situation in Kunduz to the Northern
Alliance. Also to the Americans. It was also a discussion
today with President Musharraf and the other
interlocutors."
Red Cross workers found
up to 600 bodies in Mazar-i-Sharif after it was abandoned
by the Taliban, but could not say how they died, a senior
official of the group said Thursday. Olivier Durr, head
of operations for central and south Asia for the ICRC,
said 400 to 600 bodies were found in the city after the
Taliban left on Nov 9. "But we cannot say these
people had been brutally executed or were the result of
fighting," Durr told a small group of journalists
gathered for the visit here of ICRC President Jakob
Kellenberger.
Durr could not comment
on reports of massacres in Mazar-i-Sharif after the
Taliban departed. "Even before our expatriate staff
entered (the city) our Afghan colleagues started to
collect and bury quite a number of bodies," Durr
said. He said that of the total of 400-600 bodies, about
180 had already been buried.
Reports have circulated
of widespread killings in Mazar-i-Sharif, but there has
been no confirmation. The Pakistani government spoke of
"massacres" in the city in urging the
international community on Tuesday to avoid reprisal
killings in Kunduz, where thousands of Taliban troops are
under siege.
A UN spokesman here said
around 100 young Taliban recruits had died in a school in
Mazar-i-Sharif the day after victorious Northern Alliance
forces moved into the city. Kellenberger, who had talks
here with Pakistani officials and was due to travel to
Kabul, expressed deep concern about the potential for a
bloodbath in Kunduz. "We have expressed our concern
about the situation in Kunduz to the Northern Alliance
and also to the Americans," Kellenberger said. He
did not say what the response was.
He said, however, the
ICRC could do little more than monitor the situation and
organise visits to the Taliban prisoners when they are in
detention after their surrender or capture. "The big
question is, who will be the detaining power? Who will
take over that responsibility?" Kellenberger asked.
The ICRC president,
whose group has a policy of refusing armed escorts for
its relief convoys, expressed concern over the
deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan that is
hampering humanitarian operations. "I think the
international community should do the maximum (to protect
relief operations) whatever that may mean in
detail," Kellenberger said, without elaborating.
Kunduz fall seen by Sunday: Accord on surrender reached
PESHAWAR, Nov 22: Fighting broke out to the east of besieged Kunduz, hours after a top Taliban commander said he had reached an agreement with the Northern Alliance that would require his forces to lay down arms and surrender all foreign fighters by Sunday.
Taliban deputy defence minister Mulla Fazal Akhund who held negotiations with Northern Alliance commander Gen Rashid Dostum in Mazar-i-Sharif, told reporters that all Taliban forces in Kunduz, including the non-Afghan fighters, were under his control and all would give themselves up. "There will be peace and nothing will happen," he said at the venue of the meeting.
Uzbek warlord Gen Rashid Dostum confirmed that the Taliban had agreed to disarm and surrender by Sunday. He said that both the Afghan fighters and the so-called foreign fighters in the city - mostly Arabs, Chechen, Uzbeks and Pakistanis - would surrender to the Northern Alliance.
The Afghan fighters would be allowed to go home, while the foreign fighters would be arrested and tried under the law of Islamic State of Afghanistan, he said.
Over 20,000 Taliban fighters besides a large number of foreign fighters are holding out in Pakhtoon-dominated northern Kunduz that guards routes to Tajikistan.
Taliban say the number of foreign fighters is in hundreds. According to the Northern Alliance, it is close to 10,000.
Gen Dostum said his forces would fight those refusing to surrender.
"We have reached an understanding with the Northern Alliance. The talks have been fruitful and productive," Muhammad Gul Zubair, the spokesperson for Kunduz Governor Haji Omar Khan told Dawn by telephone. He said that Mulla Fazal had had extensive talks with Gen Dostum, which continued overnight and resumed on Thursday. He, however, expressed ignorance about the details of the agreement. "We all are waiting for Mulla Fazal to return."
One Taliban commander, however, denied they had agreed to surrender. A spokesman for the Taliban told the BBC Pushto Service that talks were still continuing and that no agreement had been reached with the Northern Alliance yet.
A Northern Alliance commander, Mohammed Daud, told the radio that some Taliban men riding in 20 pick-ups had been attacked by their own comrades when they were on their way to surrender.
Some reports had earlier said that talks to negotiate the end of siege in Kunduz had collapsed.
The Kunduz governor spokesman said that there had been less intense bombing of Kunduz on Thursday and US raids had been relatively light. But he charged that some elements in the Northern Alliance were out to sabotage the understanding. He said that fighting had broken out to the east of Kunduz from Takhar side. "This may have negative bearing on the agreement," he said.
The Taliban had earlier offered to a UN supervised neutral authority to lay down their heavy weapons and hand over foreign fighters for extradition to their respective countries. But the Northern Alliance said that they would storm the city if surrender talks did not succeed by Thursday night.
AFP adds: Taliban troops began surrendering from Kunduz on Thursday as the Northern Alliance launched an offensive after the expiry of a deadline to give in or die.
About 100 soldiers gave up, but the Taliban and foreign militants said to be loyal to Osama bin Laden held firm in the besieged city despite US bombing and heavy tank fire. Around 100 Taliban soldiers crossed the front lines during the initial advance, which stopped at nightfall, and were taken in trucks to Taloqan, the capital of neighbouring Takhar province.
"A number of Taliban troops opted to give themselves up and some said they were willing to join the ranks of the Northern Alliance," said Taliban commander Najibullah, who crossed the lines to negotiate their surrender. "As far as the foreign militia are concerned, the negotiations are continuing."
UN, US and British officials said they could play no role in Kunduz, but the international community urged the Northern Alliance to avoid using the capture of the city for a bloody settling of scores.