Mission & Justice

Hassna’a Mokhtar; 26/5/08

Court bureaucracy has further impeded the case of five Pakistani mechanics, who for five years have not been paid their salaries and are living destitute in a rundown defunct factory in south Jeddah. In order to get their case moving, the five men need a Power of Attorney (POA) to enable their lawyer to act on their behalf. However, of-ficials at the Jeddah Court refused to issue a POA, as some of the men do not have iqamas.

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23/5/08

After almost three years of a hunger strike and force-feeding at Guantanamo, a Saudi detainee said he will persist with his protest until he sets foot in his native land. Legal papers obtained last week give the first detailed look at Ahmad Zaid Salem Zuhair since he was captured in Pakistan and taken to Guantanamo in 2002. The US military calls him an enemy combatant, an allegation he denies.

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Bruce Loudon; 20/5/08

The spectre of suicide bombings returned to Pakistan yesterday after a lull of almost three months, only hours after Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani personally confronted US President George W. Bush over “provocative” cross-border raids aimed at al-Qa’ida targets. The raids - in particular last week’s CIA missile attack on an al-Qa’ida compound at Damadola, in the Bajaur Tribal Agency - are blamed by Pakistani officials for sparking a suicide bombing on Sunday in a market at the Punjab Regiment garrison in Mardan, a town in North West Frontier Province. Thirteen people, including five soldiers, were killed and 23 injured - the biggest such attack since Pakistan’s elections in February, and one that casts a shadow over the Government’s attempts to negotiate peace deals with extremist groups linked to al-Qa’ida and the Taliban.

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18/5/08

The Pakistan army has taken issue with coalition forces in Afghanistan over a missile attack launched by a US drone aircraft that killed 14 people, an army spokesman said yesterday. Two missiles hit a house on Wednesday in the village of Damadola in Bajaur, a Pakistani tribal region where al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamist militant groups are active, a security official said. “We have informed the coalition headquarters in Afghanistan … we have raised this issue in tripartite commission,” army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said. The commission comprises the military commanders from the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan and the Afghan and Pakistani armies.

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14/5/08

The grey gates of Doctor Robin Sardar’s residence now bear a sign that says in red Urdu letters, “This is the house of a blasphemer.” The place has been deserted since police arrested Sardar, a Protestant, on May 5, after an angry mob of 200 armed Muslims, some carrying kerosene, sought him out for allegedly uttering derogatory remarks against Prophet Muhammad. The scene was one that the late Bishop John Joseph of Faisalabad had fought hard to keep from happening before he shot himself dead on the steps of the court building in Sahiwal a decade earlier on May 6, 1998. The bishop’s “self-sacrifice,” as local people refer to it, was a desperate plea for Pakistan to rid itself of blasphemy laws he and others charge have been widely abused since the late President Zia ul-Haq amended them in 1986. The prelate pulled the trigger in protest after a Christian was sentenced to death for blaspheming the Prophet.

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Ian Cobain; 30/4/08

Britain’s Security Service, MI5, has been accused of “outsourcing” the torture of British citizens to a notorious Pakistani intelligence agency in an attempt to obtain information about terrorist plots and to secure convictions against al-Qaeda suspects. A number of British terrorism suspects who have been arrested in Pakistan at the request of British authorities say their interrogation by Security Service officers, shortly after brutal torture at the hands of agents of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), has convinced them that MI5 colluded in the mistreatment. Those men have given detailed accounts of their alleged ordeals at the hands of the ISI over the past four years. Some of them appear to have been taken to the same secret interrogation centre in Rawalpindi, where they say they were repeatedly tortured before being questioned by MI5.

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17/4/08

Hundreds of Afghans returning home after the closure of a refugee camp in northwest Pakistan have been left stranded because of a roadblock, the United Nations refugee agency has said. About 70,000 Afghans are being forced to either return to Afghanistan or relocate elsewhere in Pakistan after the closure of the Jalozai refugee camp. Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera’s correspondent reporting from the Peshawar-Torkham highway, said: “For the last three days the main crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan has been closed because of a dispute between tribal elders and a group known as Lashkar-e-Islam.” Laskhar-e-Islam, which is sympathetic to the Taliban, stopped trucks along the highway, saying that drivers must stop trafficking alcohol and drugs across the border.

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16/5/08

Afghans in Pakistan’s largest refugee village have been forced to leave as a deadline to close the camp has passed. More than 3,300 Afghans have left Jalozai for Afghanistan since March, following an agreement between elders in the camp and Pakistani authorities to leave between March 1 and April 15 At least 70,000 Afghans in Jalozai, in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, must now either relocate to another camp or return to Afghanistan.

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Taghred Chandab & Paula Bronstein; 13/4/08

They are innocent victims of brutality, but now there is hope for women of Pakistan scarred and disfigured by vicious acid attacks. Dressed in a beautiful sari and Islamic head dress, Iram Saeed appears to be just like any other Pakistani woman.For a moment she is able to conceal the pain and scars from gazing eyes. Then she removes her heavy clothing and dark sunglasses, revealing devastation.Ten years ago, aged 19, Iram was the victim of an acid attack. Her crime? To reject a marriage proposal.

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Declan Walsh; 18/3/08

A salvo of suspected US missiles killed at least 20 people, including several al-Qaeda militants, in Pakistan’s tribal areas, a day after a restaurant bombing in the capital Islamabad wounded US and British officials, including four FBI agents. The bloody weekend underscored the extremist threat facing the new coalition government of erstwhile rivals Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari, which was due to be formed following the swearing in of Parliament yesterday. Tribesmen near Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, reported seeing up to seven missiles fired at two houses on Sunday. Earlier they heard a buzzing noise - the signature sound of US Predator drones, which have carried out at least two attacks on suspected al-Qaeda hideouts in the tribal areas this year.

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