On Tuesday Feb. 23, Iran announced the capture of Abdulmalek Rigi, the boss of the terror organization Jundullah, which works for NATO. The capture of Rigi represents a serious setback for the US-UK strategy of using false flag state-sponsored terrorism against Iran and Pakistan, and ultimately to sabotage China’s geopolitics of oil. The Iranians claim to have captured Rigi all by themselves, but the Pakistani ambassador to Teheran is quoted in The Dawn as claiming an important role for Pakistan. The Iranians say that Rigi was attempting to fly from Dubai to Kyrgystan, and that his plane was forced to land in Iran by Iranian interceptors. This exploit recalls Oliver North’s 1985 intercept of the accused Achille Lauro perpetrators, including Abu Abbas, forcing their Egyptian plane to land at Sigonella, Sicily. But other and perhaps more realistic versions suggest that Iran was tipped off by the Pakistanis, or even that Rigi was captured by Pakistan and delivered to the Iranians.
Taliban guerrillas attacked a hotel and a guesthouse in central Kabul in a dawn assault that killed at least 17 people including 9 Indians.
Three suicide bombers struck at the Park Residence Hotel and the Aria Guesthouse nearby, in the Shahr-i-Nau neighborhood, where many international aid organizations, companies and diplomatic missions are located.
The attack targeted “an Indian guesthouse,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a phone interview. Read the rest of this entry ?
MELBOURNE: After fears of a mass pull-out of international cricketers from the Indian Premier League (IPL) due to terror threats, there are reports of contingency plans to shift the next year’s World Cup from the Indian subcontinent to Australia and New Zealand.
Reacting to reported contingency, revealed by New Zealand Cricket chief executive Justin Vaughan on Sunday, International Cricket Council (ICC) executive Haroon Lorgat said they will do everything to keep the World Cup in India.
Vaughan has indicated that there were plans to move the World Cup from India to Australia or New Zealand if the security situation deteriorated.
Lahore, Feb.17 (ANI): The Indian Government’s charge that he masterminded the 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai is unfounded and baseless, said Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Muhammed Saeed.
Accusing New Delhi of indulging in fabricated propoganda, Saeed demanded concrete proof of his reported involvement in the said attack that claimed the lives of over 160 people and injured more than 300.
“India always indulges in propaganda and has always fabricated false reports about me and that’s how India has been able to use international pressure against us,” Saeed said in an exclusive interview to Al Jazeera here.
New Delhi: Fifty percent Indian military equipment is ‘obsolete’, according to a study by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the consultancy firm KPMG.
The report comes a few months after the army admitted to a Parliament standing committee that it had just over 50% of the required capability.
The CII-KPMG report, ‘Opportunities in the Indian Defence Sector: An Overview’ says India is set to undertake one of the largest procurement cycles in the world in the light of the situation. Read the rest of this entry ?
ISLAMABAD: Indian Home Minister, P. Chidambaram on Thursday revealed for the first time that an Indian national by the name of Abu Jindal could have been involved in 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Chidambaram said that voice samples of the suspect were absolutely necessary to establish his identity. He claimed that Pakistani authorities had recorded Abu Jindal’s voice through phone conversations. The Indian home minister claims that he had asked the Pakistani government to provide these phone records but Pakistan had refused to handover the voice samples to Indian authorities.
After the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the American-British [Am-Brit] media highlighted how Indian police had arrested two Indian Muslims who had links to the Kashmiri group Lashkar Tayyiba. But the Am-Brit media goes silent when the truth comes out and it turns out that Indian military intelligence is involved in creating fake terrorists and blaming them on Pakistan.
NEW DELHI, India—The Indian police authorities and the officials of India’s notorious intelligence agency RAW are known for creating fake terrorists with fake links to Pakistan. Ajmal Kasab & company were not the first in this exercise. RAW and Indian police are practicing this art for years now. In a recent development, a daring Indian lawyer exposed one such drama and proved how the Indian police and RAW officials frame innocent people to prove them to be terrorists from Pakistan.
According to details, criminal lawyer M. S. Khan succeeded in proving the innocence of two Indian men who were alleged to be associates of a Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyiba divisional commander.
A Pakistani man who confessed in court to being one of the gunmen in the terrorist attacks on Mumbai last year recanted on Friday, saying the Indian police had framed him. A gunman, who was later identified as Mohammed Ajmal Kasab at the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai in November 2008.
It was the latest flip-flop from the suspect, Ajmal Kasab, who made a dramatic and detailed confession in July, explaining his role as one of 10 Pakistanis who attacked two luxury hotels, a busy train station and a Jewish center, killing more than 160 people over three days in November 2008. Photographs and security tape show him and a partner firing at commuters at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, and dozens of witnesses have identified him. Nine of the attackers were killed in battles with the police.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—In a detailed letter written to Hamid Mir of Geo News, the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, sympathized with the families of all those who lost their lives in the Mumbai attacks last year and said that Islam does not condone random blasts at public places, nor does it endorses the killing of innocent non-Muslims.
Hafiz Muhammad Saeed is not happy with some Pakistani intellectuals and journalists who are “propagating” against him and expected that the Pakistani media would support him.
The reputed international current-affairs magazine for the Asia Pacific region ‘The Diplomat’ speaks with Ahmed Quraishi about the country’s current military offensive in Waziristan, relations with the US and what America should do to improve its image in Pakistan.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Pakistan this month meeting key political leaders. What did you make of her comment that she finds it difficult to believe that nobody in the Pakistani government knows the whereabouts of top al-Qaeda members?
Ahmed Quraishi: It was very surprising to even the most hardened skeptics here in Pakistan to hear a US secretary of state saying this, because despite all we heard during the eight years of President [George W.] Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, no American official accused Pakistan or ‘rogue elements’ in the country of supporting or protecting al-Qaeda. If ever there were any grievances with Pakistan on this count, they were mostly focused on that Pakistan had done a very good job of cooperating with the Americans on al-Qaeda, but that progress was still lacking on the Afghan Taliban and its leadership. So in the entire eight years since September 11, no US official actually criticized Pakistan by saying Pakistan was somehow trying to protect al-Qaeda…..
MUMBAI: Kavita Karkare, the wife of former Maharashtra Anti Terror Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare on Wednesday questioned the state government on why her husband and two other senior officials who were killed on 26/11, did not get reinforcements on time.
This is for the first time that the slain officer’s family has confirmed that he did not get the back up when it was required.
Karkare, along with Additional Commissioner of Police (ACP) Ashok Kamte and Inspector Vijay Salaskar were killed by terrorists near Cama Hospital in Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus during the Mumbai siege.
The Final Solution is a 2003 documentary directed by Rakesh Sharma about the 2002 communal Gujarat Riots that arose as a response to the Godhra Train Burning incident on February 27, 2002, where 58 Hindus were burnt alive on a train carriage. An official estimate states that 254 Hindus and 790 Muslims were killed during the riots, with 223 more missing. The documentary consists mostly of interviews, with both Muslims and Hindus, of multiple generations, and both sexes, with different views regarding the causes, justifications, and the actual events of the violence that occurred, as well as their prospects for the future. The government of Gujurat at the time, led by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, was highly criticised throughout the documentary and was accused of inciting much of the rioting and not doing enough to halt it.
One of the interviewees was a small boy who claimed to have seen his relatives being killed in the riots. He said that he wanted to become a “fauji” (soldier) who would kill Hindus when he grew up. When asked why, he replied in Hindi, “Because they did the same.”
Screenings and Censoring: The movie was initially banned in India for about a year, till early 2005 for fears that massive communalism and radicalism would be ignited by its extremely inflammatory content. The Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF), had denied the movie from being screened. A pilot movement to copy-and-redistribute the movie was held, briefly to protest the censoring of the movie screenings. The BBC has screened the movie. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution_(2003_film))
A no-nonsense, well-researched documentary containing footage the Indian media will never show. It does not exposition or proselytize, just shows the fact about what happened in Gujarat and its consequences.
Even though the film is banned in India, definitely try to get hold of a copy especially if you are Indian. The documentary clearly shows the insidious ways used by the RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal and BJP to spread their doctrine of hate and poison Hindu minds against Muslims just for the purposes of getting votes. See what is being done in the name of Hinduism. (kaustavsdiary)
The good terrorists are the guys who kill Indians in India and the bad terrorists are those who attack Pakistani interests whether in Afghanistan or in Pakistan.” “In other words, you blow up the Taj Mahal hotel in India, you’re a good guy, you blow up the Marriot in Islamabad you’re a bad guy. That is what the Pakistanis believe.”
These are the views of India’s Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor which he expressed yesterday while talking to a noted US News Channel the CNN. Shahshi Tharoor is not just the Minister of State for External Affairs of India but till sometime back, he was India’s nominee for the slot of Secretary General of United Nations.
ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Rehman Malik on Wednesday accused India of sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan, saying Delhi itself would be responsible for any terrorist attack if carried out in future on its soil.
‘We have solid evidence that not only in Balochistan but India is involved in almost every terrorist activity in Pakistan,’ the minister said after attending a meeting on security of educational institutions.
On Thursday morning, at least 16 people including 12 personnel of the security forces have been martyred in foiling three separate terrorist attacks by killing 9 terrorists at FIA Building, Manawan Police Training Centre and Bedian Elite Police Training Centre in Lahore. Meanwhile on the same day, at least ten persons were killed in a car suicide attack in at a police station in Kohat. According to reports, in the Thursday evening, several people were injured in a car bomb blast in Peshawar, causing the three-storey building near the Officers Colony to collapse. Many people are trapped under the debris.
AHMEDABAD, India — The tableau was as improbable as it was grisly. The bullet-riddled bodies of four Muslims lay neatly lined up in the middle of a road. One of the dead cradled a machine gun. Bomb-making chemicals and a suitcase full of cash sat in the trunk of their car. Intelligence reports had identified the four as terrorism suspects.
It was a tidy crime scene with a story to match: four Islamic extremists who planned to assassinate the powerful chief minister of India’s richest state stopped cold by a fearless band of policemen early on the morning of June 15, 2004. The officers were hailed as heroes. But the story was too good to be true, according to a recently released magistrate’s report. The supposed militants included a 19-year-old college student, a woman named Ishrat Jehan, who had no evident links to terrorist groups, the magistrate wrote. The forensic evidence showed that the four had not died in a shootout but were shot at point-blank range, much earlier than the police had said. None of the four had actually fired a gun. They had been killed, the magistrate declared, in cold blood.
Can the roofless Commandos protect Mumbai anyway ?
ALL that is visible is a blur of black, the glint of metal and then two muffled cracks – shots from silencer-fitted machine pistols. These are commandos of an elite counter-terrorism squad of the National Security Guards (NSG) of India, wearing menacing black hoods.
The basic training period at the organisation’s training centre at Manesar, 50km from New Delhi, last ninety days. Only those who complete the entire course successfully are in inducted into the NSG and given further specialised training. The probation grind saps the toughest of recruits and the drop out rate is 50 – 70%.
To beef up air attack capabilities in quickest possible time along the international border with Pakistan, the Indian Air Force has decided to station all its MIG-29 squardons at Adampur, the second largest Air Force base in the country.
The Adampur Air Force station, which is also known as home of MiG-29, already has two frontline fighter squardons and will see another squardon moving from Jamnagar in Gujrat soon. ” We consider ourselves to be a strategic air power establishment of the IAF in the western sector, ever ready for operations. We are fully geared up to operate in any given time frame like any other Air Force stations of the country,” said Air Commodore HS Arora, Air Officer Commanding of the Adampur air base.
To extend that the service life of MiG 29 by 25 to 40 years, the RAC MiG aircraft coporation signed a contract with the ministry of defence to upgrade over 60 fighters in service with the IAF since 1980s.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—CIA’s mouthpieces in the US media and the Web have been activated to give maximum punch to US threats of bombing Quetta and convincing the international public opinion of the veracity of US intelligence on the presence of Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden in Balochistan. Separately, and as we predicted in our report A US Counteroffensive In Pakistan, the US embassy has decided to launch a ‘scare campaign’ inside Pakistan, discarding security concerns and opting to intensify television appearances on Pakistani channels in order to create public pressure against the government and especially against the military and the ISI.
One of the US intelligence mouthpieces has gone as far as warning Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani of the ‘impact’ that US strikes could have on the Pakistani military, claiming that this could lead to a ‘revolt’ within the army and the Pakistani intelligence community.
The Long War Journal, founded by Bill Roggio, a frequent lecturer at US Air Force’s Contemporary Counterinsurgency Warfare School, has warned that the “expansion of the US air campaign into Balochistan would likely lead to an internal revolt in the Pakistani military. General Kiyani knows the impact a wide-reaching US air campaign would have on his military.”
An American, who survived the terrorist attack in the Indian city of Mumbai last year, resisted hate in favour of curiosity to discover and learn to embrace Islam, according to a media report.
Dennis O’Brien, a Catholic, sought to understand the root faith the people behind the attacks claimed to practice and discovered it had been twisted by the gunmen, The News Journal of Wilmington, Delaware, reported. And eventually, he came to embrace it.
