[chottala.com] Amnesty International: Dr Aafia’s court appearance raises questions

 

Dr Aafia's court appearance raises questions

* Amnesty International calls US govt's account of Aafia attacking officials 'extraordinary'
* Security official says federal prosecutors concerned that Dr Aafia's case is being oversold as coup against terrorism

LAHORE: The United States military has rejected claims that Pakistani doctor Aafia Siddiqui, who has been missing for the past five years, was being illegally detained and tortured, a report in the Christian Science Monitor said on Friday.

The report said, Siddiqui appeared before a US court in Brooklyn, New York, last week on charges of attempting to murder American servicemen in an Afghanistan shooting incident.

But her first court appearance has raised disturbing questions about her treatment and the conduct of the war on terror, with lawyers claiming she was secretly arrested five years ago, tortured by Afghan and US officials, and framed for crimes she did not commit.

The charges are the latest wrinkle in a case that has pitted the governments of the US, Afghanistan, and Pakistan against Siddiqui's family and lawyers as well as international human rights groups.

Agence France-Presse reports that the US military has rejected claims that Siddiqui was being held in military detention during the five years she was missing, the report said.

"She has never been held in US military custody," spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Rumi Nielson-Green told AFP.

Extraordinary: But outside observers have begun to doubt the credibility of the US military's claims.

Sam Zarifi, Asia-Pacific director for Amnesty International, called the government's account "extraordinary" in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR).

"It seems extraordinary to imagine that four US agents who'd gone to pick her up, two military, two FBI, along with at least two Afghan translators, were somehow surprised by this woman, who overpowered them, grabbed a gun, flipped the safety, fired off a couple of shots, and then could only be subdued by shots to the torso," said [Zarifi].

"If the story suggested by the US government is accurate, it paints a very unflattering picture of the competence of forces who are literally on the frontlines of the 'war on terror'," he said. "If the US story is not true, then we're looking at a serious breach of US and international law when a prisoner in custody is shot."

Coup: A law enforcement official who didn't want to be named said federal prosecutors in Manhattan were concerned that the case against Siddiqui was being oversold as a coup against terrorism.

"It's not clear it was even a target list," the official said.

Siddiqui's legal team paints a very different picture of what has happened to their client. They say she has been set up by the government, with one of her lawyers, Elizabeth Fink, telling the Associated Press, "Of course they found all this stuff on her. It was planted on her.... She is the ultimate victim of the American dark side."

At a hearing on Monday, a Manhattan federal magistrate-judge ordered Siddiqui, wounded in the July 18 shooting incident, to get a physical examination within 24 hours. Her next court date was postponed until September. She appeared in court in a wheelchair.

NPR reports that Siddiqui's lawyers say she was arrested in 2003, shortly after she disappeared in Pakistan with her three children, and was held and tortured in a secret US prison in Afghanistan. Siddiqui has also been identified by her legal team as the mysterious "prisoner 650" at Bagram Air base, a female prisoner in solitary confinement that other prisoners claim to have heard screaming.

Siddiqui's lawyer, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, told NPR that she suspects her client was set up. She suspects Siddiqui was being held captive, was dropped off at the compound and then was immediately picked up again with "conveniently incriminating evidence".

Whitfield Sharp says she has proof that Siddiqui was actually being held at Bagram Air Base, in a secret prison in Afghanistan, for the past five years. The FBI, the Justice Department and CIA officials say unequivocally that they haven't been holding Siddiqui and don't know where she has been the past five years. daily times monitor

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C08%5C16%5Cstory_16-8-2008_pg7_15

 

Attorney mum on Aafia's children whereabouts
Pakistan Dawn, Pakistan - 2 hours ago
By Masood Haider NEW YORK, Aug 15: Elizabeth Fink, the attorney for Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman charged by the US authorities with trying to kill US ...

 

 

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[chottala.com] Professor Yunus is expected to lead by deeds, not words

What  our susil media alo- star says about their once their cohort in search of honest and  competent  candidate?   http://www.newagebd.com/2008/aug/16/edit.html For years now, a number of individuals and organisations, including some leading private-sector mobile phone operators, have been involved in the illegal use of voice over internet protocol for international call transmission, depriving the public exchequer crores of takas in unpaid revenues. Hence, we have always advocated for stringent governmental measure against such malpractices and welcomed it when the Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission waged a war, so to speak, against both big- and small-time VoIP operators. We were hardly surprised when such leading telecom companies as the GrameenPhone, which happens to be the largest mobile phone operator in the country, and the Telecom Malaysia International (Bangladesh), which owns Aktel, were fined Tk 168.40 crore and Tk 145 crore respectively for VoIP-related offence in 2007.    However, the involvement of the GrameenPhone in an illegal operation saddened us; after all, the company is linked to Professor Muhammad Yunus, who has brightened the country's image by winning the Nobel Peace Prize along with the Grameen Bank. Now that the telecom regulatory commission has again fined the GrameenPhone – Tk 250 crore this time around – for the same offence, we feel ashamed and outraged; more so because Professor Yunus has hardly ever tired of preaching the need for good governance, accountability and transparency at all spheres of the nation's life. When a company is associated with a person of Professor Yunus's stature, it may do one of two things – abuse his fame to maximise profit or protect his name by adhering to incontrovertible corporate practices. Regrettably, the GrameenPhone has shunned the latter, which is desirable, and settled for the former, which is deplorable.    Professor Yunus should know better that all his talks about good governance, accountability and transparency would ring hollow, if these are not practised in the institution that he is organically linked to. He should also realise that he himself is an institution and is, therefore, expected to lead by deeds not words. Hence, unless and until he manages to bring his own house in order, his preaching for good governance, accountability and transparency in national life would count for little আল্লাহ যাকে যখন ইচ্ছা ক্ষমতা দান করেন,মাইনাস টু ফরমুলায় তাই হাসেন http://www.microscopiceye.blogspot.com/

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[chottala.com] Some food for thought

Hello Everybody,   Today is National Mourning Day.  One of the worst assassinations of human history happened this day in 1975.  Let's take a moment to pray for the souls who died on this day.   Here are some food for thought:   1.  Salt was 80 taka/kg in '74, but when Bongobondhu was killed it was 2 taka/kg   2.  Per capita international  loan in '75 was ~ 950/= and 5,000/= during Ziaur Rahman and currently it's sky high   3.  National GDP rate was 7% in '75 which was NEVER achieved later. So why was Bongobondhu killed in '75 ???????  Why NOT in '74 or in '73 or in '72 ?????  Can anybody answer ???   Thanks and best regards.   - Mr. Abul A complete neutral person

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[chottala.com] CIA Involvement in Sheikh Mujib Killing

CIA Involvement in Sheikh Mujib Killing

The past is never dead
The long shadow of the August 1975 coup

Lawrence Lifschultz

Published on February 13, 2007

http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/08/15/d5081501033.htm

 

What USA started during the Liberation War in 1971 with attempt to split the Awami League using Khandaker Moshtaque and his accomplices continued after the independence following a direct US instigation, resulting in the carnage on August 15, 1975. On basis of his 30 years' investigation that included interviews with the US sources, Moshtaque and others concerned, Lifschultz has written a series of that tale. . ...

 

 

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Was the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family members on August 15, 1975 merely the result of personal malice and an act out of sudden fury of some army officers?

Long investigation by veteran US journalist Lawrence Lifschultz has made it clear that there was a deep-rooted conspiracy behind the dark episode of August 15.

Lifschultz in a number of investigative reports published in newspapers made it clear that Khandaker Moshtaque and a quarter of US embassy officials in Dhaka were closely involved with the small section of army officers in the August 15 coup.

At long last, Lifschultz disclosed the name of his "very reliable source", the then US ambassador in Dhaka Eugene Booster with whom he has maintained close communication for the 30 years.

Booster repeatedly objected to the conspiracy leading to the August 15 assassination, even issued written instruction in this regard, but failed to prevent the then station chief Philip Cherry of US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Dhaka office from doing the conspiracy.

Lifschultz's plan to publish an interview of Eugene Booster in this regard remained unfulfilled as Booster passed away on July 7 last.

The new-born Bangladesh could not save herself from the wrath of then foreign secretary Henry Kissinger who could never forget that Bangladesh was born in opposition to his suggestion.

Along with Salvador Allende of Chile and Taiyoo of Vietnam, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was in Kissinger's political vendetta.

What USA started during the Liberation War in 1971 with attempt to split the Awami League using Khandaker Moshtaque and his accomplices continued after the independence following a direct US instigation, resulting in the carnage on August 15, 1975.

On basis of his 30 years' investigation that included interviews with the US sources, Moshtaque and others concerned, Lifschultz has written a series of that tale.

The first part of his four reports is published today.

The 30th anniversary of the August 15th military coup in Bangladesh powerfully illustrates the dictum of William Faulkner that the past is never dead, it is not even past. For those of us who lived through the years of Bangladesh's 'War of Independence' and the decade of the 1970s, we remember these dates as milestones of an era. They are markers on a road we traveled to a destination many did not reach. After thirty years Bangladesh still lives with the legacy of the violent night of August 15th. Just over four years from that dark March night in 1971 when Pakistani Army troops rolled their tanks and armoured vehicles through the streets of Dhaka slaughtering their fellow countrymen instead of accepting the outcome of national elections they had agreed to accept, a small unit of the new Bangladesh Army invoking the sordid tradition of Pakistan Army staged a traditional military putsch. Within hours, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, symbol for many of an ideal of liberation, was dead in a military coup d'etat that had run amok in a frenzy of killing. Mujib and almost his entire family were slaughtered including his wife and sons, the youngest only twelve. On that deadly night groups of soldiers broke into squads and traveled around the city killing relatives of Mujib's family.

The pregnant wife of one relation who attempted to intercede to save her husband's life was herself killed for her efforts. Mujib's two daughters were abroad and they survived with Sheikh Hasina years later becoming Prime Minister. Yet, only a year ago, she too was nearly assassinated in broad daylight by a hit squad that still "eludes" capture, demonstrating yet again Faulkner's insightthe past is not even past. It is very much present. The political configuration that exists today is a direct descendant of August 15, 1975. The current Prime Minister, Khaleda Zia, was the wife of the late General Ziaur Rahman, the Deputy Chief of Army Staff in 1975, who played a crucial behind scenes role in the plotting that preceded the coup and in the events which followed. At the American Embassy that night political and intelligence officers tried to monitor the unfolding events. But, there was one figure at the Embassy in the days that followed the coup who was particularly unsettled. A small knot had settled in his stomach. The events were an echo of what he had feared might happen months earlier and which he had made strenuous efforts to prevent.

I would meet this man in Washington three years later. He became a critical source for me and clearly hoped the information that he provided would one day lead to uncomfortable truths being revealed and those responsible being held accountable. For the first time in nearly thirty years I can identify this individual. I have been freed from a restraint of confidentiality that I have adhered to for almost three decades. But, be patient, with me a bit longer while I explain how and why I came to meet this individual. I was one among many foreign correspondents covering the coup. Yet, I was the only journalist reporting these events for a major publication who had actually lived in Bangladesh as a journalist. I was the Dhaka correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong) in 1974. The following year I moved to New Delhi and took up a new position as South Asia Correspondent for the Review. The violent death of Mujib would draw me into an inquiry that I could never have anticipated would, again and again, hold me in its sway at different stages of my life.  My unusual source who worked at the American Embassy that night would encourage me forward by his own honesty and quality of integrity. He was one of those unusual individuals one occasionally finds inhabiting an official bureaucracy. He was deeply distressed about the coup and the subsequent killings. He was a man with a conscience. Unlike the rest of us he knew something others did not and that knowledge tore at his conscience. It was this sense of ethical responsibility that brought us face-to-face in one of the more memorable encounters I had as young reporter.

After the coup against Mujib the official story put about by the successor regime and its minions in the Bangladesh press disturbed me. It didn't hold together. Moreover, the cracks began to reveal rather curious links and antecedents. The version of events which emerged at the time was that six junior officers, with three hundred men under their command, had acted exclusively on their own in overthrowing Mujib. The motives for the coup were attributed to a combination of personal grudges held by certain of the officers against Mujib and his associates, together with a general mood of frustration at the widespread corruption that had come to characterize certain elements of Mujib's regime. In short, according to this view of events the coup was an ad hoc affair not a thought out plan a year or more in the making. The morning Mujib and his family were killed, the figure installed by the young majors as President was Khandakar Mustaque Ahmed, generally considered to be the representative of a rightist faction within Mujib's own party, the Awami League. After the putsch, Mustaque remained impeccably reticent about any part he personally might have played in Mujib's downfall. He neither confirmed nor denied his prior involvement. He simply avoided any public discussion of the question and desperately attempted to stabilize his regime.

A year following the coup, after he had himself been toppled from power and before his own arrest on corruption charges, Mustaque denied to me in an interview at his home in the "Old City" of Dhaka that he had any prior knowledge of the coup plan or piror meetings with the army majors, who carried out the action. However, the majors who staged the military part of the coup and were forced into exile within four months by upheavals within the Bangladesh Army began to tell a different tale.

In interviews with journalists in Bangkok and elsewhere, bitter at their abandonment by their erstwhile sponsors and allies, the majors began to talk out of school. They confirmed prior meetings with Mustaque and his associates. A story began to emerge that Mustaque and his political friends had been involved for more than a year in a web of secret planning that would lead to the overthrow and death of Mujib. 

 

A few months after the coup, a mid-level official at the U.S. Embassy told me that he was aware of serious tensions within the U.S. Embassy over what had happened in August. He said that there were stories circulating inside the Embassy that the CIA's Station Chief, Philip Cherry, had somehow been involved in the coup and that there was specific tension between Cherry and Eugene Boster, the American Ambassador. He had no specific details about the nature of this "tension" only that there were problems. "I understand," he said, "something happened that should not have happened." He urged me to dig further. 

 

American involvement in the coup didn't make sense to me. In the United States, two Congressional Committees were gearing up to investigate illegal covert actions of the Central Intelligence Agency. The so-called Church and Pike Committee hearings in Washington on CIA assassinations of foreign leaders had begun. The committee hearings were having their own impact within the American diplomatic and intelligence bureaucracies creating great nervousness and anxiety. The American press was openly speculating that senior American intelligence officials might face imprisonment for illegal clandestine action in Chile and elsewhere.

 

It was the summer when citizens of the United States first heard acronyms like MONGOOSE, COINTELPRO, AM/LASH and elaborate details of assassination plots against Lumumba in the Congo, Castro in Cuba and Allende in Chile. The covert hand of American power had touched far and wide. Now the tip of the iceberg was publicly emerging so that for the first time Americans could take a clear look. Yet, all that was happening far away in Washington, in a muggy heat as sultry as any South Asian monsoon.

 

In India, Indira Gandhi, speaking of the tragedy of Mujib's death, spoke of the sure hand of foreign involvement. As usual, Mrs. Gandhi was graphically lacking in details or specifics. However, her avid supporters during those first nuptial days of India's Emergency, the pro-Moscow Communist Party of India (C.P.I.) were more explicit: the CIA said the CPI was behind the coup. I dismissed this as propaganda based on no specific evidence.

 

Yet, how had the coup happened? There were still huge gaps in my knowledge of how specific actors had traveled through the various mazes they had constructed to disguise their movements yet which ultimately led to August 15th. I was living in England nearly three years after the coup when I decided to make a trip to Washington to visit a colleague of mine, Kai Bird, who was then an editor with The Nation magazine, published from New York. Today he is a prominent American author.

 

Lawrence Lifschultz was South Asia Correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong). He has written extensively on European and Asian affairs for The Guardian (London), Le Monde Diplomatique, The Nation (New York), and the BBC among numerous other journals and publications. Lifschultz is editor and author of several books including Why Bosnia? (with Rabia Ali) and Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History & The Smithsonian Controversy (with Kai Bird). He is currently at work on a book concerning Kashmir.

=====================

The article is Originally published at Daily Star and can be viewed at :

http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/08/15/d5081501033.htm

=========

Related :

Mitrokhin Mystry

 
(Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 )

[Courtesy: Mukto-Mona] 

Other writings on Sheikh Mujib (courtesy : muktadhara.net):

1. Click here for the Banla pdf version of 1975 military coup written by Lt Col (retd) MA Hamid
2. Mujib: A Rebel per se by columnist KG Mustafa
3. CIA and assassination of Mujib
4. The first protest against the assassination of Mujib
5. The Killing Spree of the dark night of 15 August (Bangla)

 

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[chottala.com] Bangladeshi Man jailed for sheltering father in UAE

Man jailed for sheltering father in UAE

By Nasouh Nazzal, Staff Reporter Gulf News Published: August 14, 2008, 23:01

Ras Al Khaimah:  A Bangladeshi has been jailed for two months and fined Dh100,000 for sheltering his father who had entered the country illegally. He will be deported after he serves his term, according to court records. The court has sentenced the father to a month's imprisonment, followed by deportation. A senior court official said the father came into the country illegally through the Oman-UAE border and reached his son in Ras Al Khaimah two months ago. The father who came into the UAE with the intent to work, spent a couple of months searching for work but without success. The court official said the father lost hope of finding a job and decided to turn himself in to UAE authorities who could take care of his deportation. The father consulted his son who approved the plan believing that the authorities would handle his father's situation charitably.

EMPLOYMENT
	Immoral agents cashing in on Dubai jobseekers

http://www.gulfnews.com/nation/Police_and_The_Courts/10237355.html

 

 

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