PTI condoles with Imran Khan Tuesday, December 08, 2009 Our correspondent Islamabad

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=212203

A delegation of the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) Sunday called on the party chairman, Imran Khan, here to condole with him on the death of Major General Bilal Omar, who was the PTI chief’s close relative. The general fell victim to a terrorist attack at a mosque in Parade Lane in Rawalpindi the other day along with several others.

Imran Khan strongly condemned the suicide attacks and bomb blasts and said it was criminal to take lives of innocent people through such savagery. He said that it was the prime responsibility of the government to ensure safety of its people under any circumstances. He called for the initiation of dialogue to resolve problems.

Those who met Imran included PTI’s vice president Aamir Kiani, central additional secretary general Saifullah Niazi, central information secretary Omar Sarfraz Cheema, central finance secretary Sardar Azhar Tariq, media adviser to chairman Zahid Hussain Kazmi and president of women wing Fauzia Kasuri.

FBI probing ex-Army major’s terror links Wednesday, December 09, 2009 By Amir Mir
http://thenews.jang.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=25988

LAHORE: The American intelligence sleuths stationed in Pakistan are trying to ascertain whether Abdur Rehman, alias Pasha, a retired major of the Pakistan Army, who has recently been named by the FBI as a key link between the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack suspect David Headley and his Lashkar-e-Taiba handlers, is the brother-in-law of Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the absconding Ameer of the pro-Taliban Pakistani Jehadi group Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI).

Rehman has been charged in a Chicago court by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) on allegations of conspiring terrorist attacks in association with Headley, a US national of Pakistani-origin, who is already in the FBI’s custody. According to diplomatic circles in Islamabad, the American intelligence sleuths are trying to determine if Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed is the same person who had filed a petition in the Supreme Court on October 12, 2004, challenging the arrest of Qari Saifullah Akhtar and seeking his production in the apex court.

The petitioner had also sought a court order to prevent possible deportation of Qari Saifullah, his brother-in-law, to another country. The petition was thrown out on January 18, 2005. Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the Ameer of the Pakistan chapter of the HUJI, who had been arrested in 1995 for conspiring to topple the second government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, had been named by the slain PPP leader in her posthumous book — Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West – as a principal suspect in the October 18, 2007 attempt on her life in Karachi.

Considered close to Afghan Taliban chief Mulla Omar, Qari Saifullah was arrested after his failed coup attempt in 1995, before being freed under mysterious circumstances in 1996 soon after the premature dismissal of the Bhutto government. He had subsequently traveled to Afghanistan, only to become an adviser to Mulla Omar on political affairs.

Before the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the HUJI had got membership among the Taliban cabinet as three Taliban ministers and 22 judges belonged to it. Qari was one of the few Jehadi leaders who had escaped with Mulla Omar after the Allied Forces invaded Afghanistan in October 2001. He first took shelter in the South Waziristan Agency, then moved to Peshawar and eventually fled to Saudi Arabia, from where he decided to move to the UAE. Three years later, on August 6, 2004, Qari Saifullah was arrested by the UAE authorities and handed over to the Pakistani agencies. The arrest came after revelations during investigations of the December 2003 twin suicide attacks on Musharraf that he had been executing terrorist operations in Pakistan with the help of his men there.

Instead of trying to prosecute and convict him after his arrest, the authorities chose to keep him under detention for the next two years and nine months, without filing any criminal charges against him. However, a few months before Benazir’s return home, he was released, before being arrested again in February 2008 following Benazir’s claim of his involvement in the Karachi bombing and the subsequent pressure created by the world community. But he was released on May 21, 2007 for lack of evidence. Pakistan Army Spokesman Major General Athar Abbas refused to either confirm or deny that Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed was actually a former major of the Pakistan Army. Same was the case with the interior ministry spokesman who was of the view that the Pakistani authorities would investigate the matter and ascertain the identity of Abdur Rehman if and when officially asked by the American FBI.

According to the 42-page FBI charge sheet, Abdur Rehman coordinated with Ilyas Kashmiri, the chief of the Azad Kashmir chapter of the Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI) and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, an operative of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) to commit terrorist acts involving murder and maiming outside the US, and conspired within and outside the US to provide material support to that conspiracy.

David Headley, already arrested on October 3, 2009, has been charged with criminal conspiracy in the Mumbai terror attacks and having links with Abdur Rehman who liaised between him and terror groups including LeT and HUJI. The charges filed in the federal court in Chicago said Headley, 49, conducted extensive surveillance of targets in Mumbai for more than two years preceding 26/11, and supplied pictures and videotapes of targets to the attackers.

JI refuses to declare suicide bombing un-Islamic – Sources in JI say that the party has neither declared suicide bombing as Haram or Halal, maintaining that it is an issue related purely to the people whose kith and kin were killed either by US drone attacks or by air strikes of the Pakistan military, adding that they have every right to react. Govt’s effort to gather support against terrorism – JI refuses to declare suicide bombing un-Islamic Wednesday, December 09, 2009 By Shamim Bano Karachi http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=212336

killing in any name … be it god, country of the king, is KILLING. It is MURDER. It takes lives. Bloodshed of this innocent child at the hands of vicious men killing in the name of religion is as deplorable as was the killing of innocent women and children of Lal Masjid at the hands of our vicious soldiers. It pays to keep things in perspective.