Silver Scorpio - International News | Spot News | Top News | Flash News | Live News
GENEVA: Syria was in the dock at an urgent session of the United Nations Human Rights Council which began on Monday and which the US envoy said underscored the increasing international isolation of president Bashar al-Assad .
The United States, the European Union and Arab nations want to set up an international inquiry into atrocities by Syrian government forces.
Islamabad, May 2 (IANS) A son of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been killed in Pakistan, a media report said.
Xinhua quoted Duniya TV as saying that one of bin Laden’s sons was killed in an operation. The report didn’t name him.
Osama bin Laden was killed Monday in a security operation in Pakistan’s Abbotabad city, less than 100 km from the Pakistan capital.
US President Barack Obama said that the US launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad.
“A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body,” said Obama.
London, Sep.19 (ANI): Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has asked Britain to stop blaming Islamabad for the ‘home grown’ terror plots against the UK.
Referring to Britain’s lashing out at Pakistan on the liquid bomb plot issue, Qureshi said it was unfair to criticize Pakistan for every terror plot hatched in Britain.
“It is easy to pass the buck, but they (liquid bomb plotters) were British citizens. They went to school here, they are part of the British system, and they live here. If they do something extraordinary is it fair that Pakistan should be blamed?” The Independent quoted Qureshi, as saying.
Pakistan has been critical of Britain’s accusations and has objected to allegations regarding it not doing enough to counter the expanding reach of the extremists based in the country’s tribal region.
A top Pakistani diplomat recently reacted strongly to Britain’s accusations regarding Pakistan harbouring extremists plotting to attack the UK.
The diplomat charged Britain of not doing enough to tackle home grown terrorists and treating Pakistan as a “whipping boy”.
“Sometimes for our British friends the truth is bitter. We have somehow turned out to be a ‘whipping boy’, there is a long history to that. The British need to search their own house,” the diplomat had said.
It may be recalled that Prime Minister Gordon Brown, during his Islamabad visit earlier this year, had said: “Three-quarters of the most serious plots investigated by the British authorities have links to Al-Qaida in Pakistan.”
Brown’s statement had angered Pakistani leadership and strained relationship between two countries, but things normalized later with President Asif Ali Zardari visit to the UK. (ANI)
Tel Aviv, Sep.18 (ANI): Israel’s National Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Bureau has issued a terror warning for India, saying a Pakistani terror group, having close links with Al-Qaeda, is planning to carry out series of strikes across the country.
“A Pakistani terror organization affiliated with al-Qaida and responsible for the attacks in Mumbai last year is planning to carry out a string of attacks throughout the Indian subcontinent,” the notice issued by the bureau stated.
The warning said that though foreigners, especially from western countries could be targeted, and that Israelis and places where Israelis usually assemble in large numbers are on top of the terror outfit’s hit list.
The bureau rated the threat as ‘imminent and concrete’ and emphasized on the Jammu and Kashmir region, The Jerusalem Post reported.
This is probably the first time that such a warning has been issued regarding threat to Israelis in India, as India is considered a friendly country with thousands of Israelis living in different part of the nation. (ANI)
Baghdad, Sep. 14 (ANI): Iraq has postponed the release of the journalist who threw his shoe at former US President George W Bush in Baghdad last year.raqi television journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi will be released from prison a day later than expected, his brother said.
“He called me from the prison and said ‘they won’t release me today, they will free me tomorrow’,” The Telegraph quoted Durgham al-Zaidi, as saying in tears.
Zaidi, 30, was initially sentenced to three years for assaulting a foreign head of state but had his jail time reduced to one year on appeal. He is being freed early because of good behaviour.
Zaidi shouted “it is the farewell kiss, you dog,” at Bush on December 14 last year, seconds before hurling his size-10 shoes at the man who ordered Iraq be invaded and occupied six-and-a-half years ago.
Although Bush, who successfully ducked to avoid the speeding footwear, laughed off the attack, the incident caused massive embarrassment, to both him and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Zaidi faces the prospect of a very different life from his previous existence as a journalist for Al-Baghdadia television, a small, privately owned Cairo-based station, which has continued to pay his salary in jail.
Zaidi’s boss has promised the previously little-known reporter a new home as a reward for loyalty and the publicity that his actions, broadcast live across the world, generated for the station.
But there is talk of plum job offers from bigger Arab networks, lavish gifts such as sports cars from businessmen, a celebrity status, and reports that Arab women from Baghdad to the Gaza Strip want his hand in marriage. (ANI)
Islamabad, Sep 14 (ANI): Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has said that US President Barack Obama is “powerless” to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a transcript of a tape released by the terrorist organization’s media wing.
Al Qaeda’s As-Sahab Media released a video featuring a still image of Osama and audio statement entitled “A statement to the American people,” said the organisation IntelCenter.
SITE Intelligence Group, a terrorist-monitoring firm that translated the address, says Osama blames the wars on the “pro-Israel lobby” and corporate interests.
IntelCenter, another company that monitors terrorist propaganda, reports that the 11-minute video is an address to the American people, two days after the eighth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
The group described the release as an address to the American public. Osama usually releases a statement around September or October each year, The Times reports.
In his last previous known message in June, Osama said US President Barack Obama had planted the seeds of “revenge and hatred” towards the United States in the Muslim world and warned of decades of conflict to come.
That audiotape aired on Qatar’s Al-Jazeera news channel less than an hour after Obama landed in Saudi Arabia.
Obama “has followed the steps of his predecessor in antagonizing Muslims… and laying the foundation for long wars,” Osama said in the June release, referring to deadly clashes in Pakistan between the US-backed government and Islamist militants.
“He gave his orders to (Pakistani President Asif Ali) Zardari and his army to prevent the people of Swat from applying Sharia (Islamic) law,” he said.
“Obama and his administration have sowed new seeds of hatred against America. Let the American people prepare to harvest the crops of what the leaders of the White House plant in the next years and decades,” said the Al-Qaeda leader. (ANI)
London, Sep.13 (ANI): British intelligence chiefs have targeted war-torn Somalia as the next major challenge to their efforts to repel Islamic terrorism, after receiving reports of scores of youths leaving the UK for “jihad training” in that failed African state.
According to The Independent, MI5 bosses have warned ministers that the number of young Britons travelling to Somalia to fight in a “holy war”, or train in terror training camps, has soared in recent years as the country has emerged as an alternative base for radical Islamic groups.
The number of young Britons following the trail every year has more than quadrupled to at least 100 since 2004 – and analysts warn that the true figure (which would include those who enter the country overland) will be much higher.
However, the British authorities are particularly concerned about the number of people with no direct family connection to Somalia who are travelling to fight and train there.
The diversity suggests Somalia is flourishing as a training ground for radical British Muslims, who could join the local terrorist militia al-Shabaab (“the youth”), go on to join conflicts including the Afghan campaign, or return home to pose a security threat to the UK. (ANI)
London, Sep. 11 (ANI): Mehdi Ghezali, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee of Swedish origin has been arrested in Pakistan.
Before being arrested at a checkpoint in the southern town of Dera Ghazi Khan, Ghezali was travelling with a group of foreigners to the South Waziristan tribal region, an al-Qaeda stronghold region, Times Online reports.
A laptop and 10,000 dollars were seized from Ghezali.
Ghezali is among three Swedes and four Turks who are now being interrogated by the Pakistani Intelligence on suspicion of entering the country illegally and to see if they have links with militants, the report adds.
According to Pakistani army sources, Ghezali had entered Pakistan via Iran.
Ghezali, 30, was arrested in December 2001 near the Tora Bora mountains in eastern Afghanistan and was handed over to the US military.
He spent more than two years at Guantanamo Bay before being released in 2004. (ANI)
London, Sep 12 (ANI): The handshake by world’s most dreaded terrorist Osama bin Laden has been described as limp, and like shaking a wet fish by a producer of CNN who met the terror mastermind.
CNN producer Peter Bergen, who wrote The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al-Qaeda’s Leader, met the most dreaded terrorist in March 1997 when he went to film his first television interview.
Bergen narrates about the extra security around bin Laden and how they were taken to his hideout at night changing vehicles blindfolded.
The interview took place near the Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan where Bergen and his crew were electronically swept for tracking devices, and had to pass through three groups of guards armed with sub-machineguns.
“Bin Laden made no effort at small talk, wanting to get the interview done as soon as possible. Peter Jouvenal, our British cameraman, remembers that bin Laden’s handshake was limp, like shaking a wet fish,” The Times quoted him, as saying.
“I don’t recall shaking his hand but I do remember that he took frequent sips from a cup of tea, giving him an air that was more feline than fierce, and his blistering diatribe against the US for its policies in the Middle East was delivered in a barely audible whisper. After an hour he was gone, as suddenly as he had arrived,” he adds.
He also narrates Abdel Bari Atwan, a London-based Palestinian journalist who interviewed him in Afghanistan in 1996, as saying that Bin Laden, it seems, had prepared for life as a fugitive for years, adopting a monk-like detachment from material comforts.
Zaynab Khadr, whose family lived with the al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan during the late 1990s, was quoted by the author as saying that he did not even allow his children to drink cold water because he wanted them to be prepared for the day when there’s no cold water.
He quotes Bin Laden as once instructing his followers: “You should learn to sacrifice everything from modern life like electricity, air-conditioning, refrigerators, gasoline. If you are living the luxury life, it’s very hard to go to the mountains to fight.”
In a tape posted to Islamist websites in February 2006, he says bin Laden confirmed his willingness to be martyred: “I have sworn to only live free. Even if I find bitter the taste of death, I don’t want to die humiliated or deceived.” (ANI)
London, Sep 11(ANI): Al-Qaida, known for its rigorous training camps for terrorists to carry out attacks around the World, is now undergoing a massive change as tales from six captured Al-Qaida terrorists belonging to immigrant communities in France and Belgium reveals another facet of the organisation.
According to intelligence reports, it is claimed that all the flashy videos shown to prospect recruits were a “trick”, which served a dual purpose -”to intimidate enemies and to attract new recruits” The Guardian reports.
However, the reality had a different picture for them, they had to spent months in Pakistan’s rugged frontier zones and had nothing more than basic small arms training, some physical exercise and religious instruction.
They were also expected to pay around 1,000 dollars for their equipment, weapons and accommodation.
The disappointments for them continued, as they did not get any opportunity to meet supreme head Osama Bin Laden, nor was there any real need for them as fighters in Afghanistan.
Training provided to them involved little live firing and weeks of religious instruction from a junior cleric.
Though the six were forbidden to venture outdoors, one of the six did eventually participate in operations against US forces. (ANI)
London, Sep.9 (ANI): The Pakistani intelligence had tortured Rashid Rauf, the alleged mastermind of the airliner bombing plot, so badly that Britain had to abandon its plan to prosecute him.
According to the Guardian, Rauf was treated so badly that he could not be extradited.
Rauf, who was born in Pakistan in January 1981 and raised in Birmingham, is described as a key figure in Al-Qaida’s most ambitious conspiracy against the western world since the 9/11 carnage.
Rauf has also been named as a possible ‘facilitator’ of the July 7, 2005 London terror attacks by MI5 and MI6.
Rauf, wanted in London for murder, was arrested in Pakistan in August 2006, but he later escaped from police custody in Rawalpindi in broad daylight just two weeks before the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
His escape also aborted an alleged plan said to be mutually agreed between Islamabad and London to exchange Rauf for two high-profile Baloch leaders wanted for allegedly waging war against the Pakistan army.
The Baloch leaders seeking sanctuary in the UK were arrested for the exchange purpose but after Rauf’s escape the court apparently released them for want of evidence. (ANI)
London, Sep.9 (ANI): A top Pakistani diplomat has reacted strongly to Britain’s accusations regarding Pakistan harbouring extremists plotting to attack the UK.
The diplomat charged Britain of not doing enough to tackle home grown terrorists and treating Pakistan as a “whipping boy”.
“Sometimes for our British friends the truth is bitter. We have somehow turned out to be a ‘whipping boy’, there is a long history to that. The British need to search their own house. Britain has to take responsibility and they have to look into the issues which are driving these youth to extremism, which is the third-generation British – they weren’t born and bought up in Pakistan,” The Guardian quoted the diplomat, who refused to be named, as saying.
Referring to the massive airliners bombing plot, he said the terrorists who were nabbed and convicted were ‘born and brought up’ in Britain, and not in Pakistan.
The diplomat underlined that it was the Pakistani intelligence agencies that had tipped Britain regarding the plot following which it was unearthed.
He said the plotters would have succeeded in their plans if the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had not shared reports with London.
“It was Pakistan that informed Britain about this plot. We tipped them off, it was our security agency that tipped off the British … the British authorities were very much indebted to Pakistan. We had a major role in unearthing this plot. Had it not been for Pakistan (it) would not have been unearthed,” he said.
It may be recalled that Prime Minister Gordon Brown, during his Islamabad visit earlier this year, had said: “Three-quarters of the most serious plots investigated by the British authorities have links to Al-Qaida in Pakistan.”
Brown’s statement had angered Pakistani leadership and strained relationship between two countries, but things normalized later with President Asif Ali Zardari visit to the UK. (ANI)
London, Sep.8 (ANI): New evidence put before a British jury during a retrial of three Brit Muslim convicts suggests that the men used code words to discuss their plans with an al-Qaeda fixer based in Pakistan.
The e-mails and conversations suggest that the plot was in its final stages, possibly days away from execution in 2006.
The seven daily flights highlighted by the three plotters were: 14.15 United Airlines Flight 931 to San Francisco; 15.00 Air Canada Flight 849 to Toronto; 15.15 Air Canada Flight 865 to Montreal; 15.40 United Airlines Flight 959 to Chicago; 16.20 United Airlines Flight 925 to Washington; 16.35 American Airlines Flight 131 to New York; 16.50 American Airlines Flight 91 to Chicago.
According to The Telegraph and the Daily Express, the batteries the gang planned to use as part of their detonators were bought in Pakistan.
An ingredient in the bomb mix was the orange soft drink Tang – sold in Pakistan – which had a high sugar content to aid the explosion.
A British intelligence source said: “The use of drink bottles sold in Pakistan and batteries sold in Pakistan underline the plot’s ties to that country. The foot soldiers were from Britain – but the organisers were in Pakistan.”
A security source said of the conspiracy: “It was very clever and the airport scanners would not have picked up the devices at all.”
Prosecutor Peter Wright told the Woolwich Crown Court in South East London how the would-be bombers were “a cell of home-grown terrorists activated and directed by a designated leader in Pakistan.”
That was confirmed by a government source in Pakistan, who said the plot was believed to have originated “with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.”
Seized e-mails showed the chain of terror stretched from there, across the lawless border to Pakistan, to London and to the woods of High Wycombe where explosives were buried.
The aim was to mirror the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, which killed 259 passengers and 11 in the Scottish town.
Aliases exposed during the trial revealed the terror kingpin in Pakistan was dubbed “Paps” or “Papa”.
Ali called himself Imran and Chacha and also set up email accounts in the bogus names Tippu Khan and Jameel Masood.
His co-conspirators used aliases such as Fatty, Arro and Nigga.
Hydrogen peroxide was known as “aftershave”, police surveillance as “skin problems” and martyrdom videos were referred to as “wedding tapes”.
It is also thought that the bomb makers received training at an al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan.
A mystery Pakistani, thought to be a top al-Qaeda envoy, made contact with the three would-be suicide bombers during a flying visit to Britain in June 2006.
Experts who tested the explosive mix on the aircraft were horrified.
A witness said: “It was absolutely devastating.” (ANI)
London, Sep.6 (ANI): British and Scottish Members of Parliament are keen to know whether former Prime Minister Tony Blair played a role in a deal between Britain and Libya to secure the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi at a meeting in a London club in 2003, long before either the Scottish government or Gordon Brown was involved.
According to The Independent, questions are being raised in Parliament over the meeting that Blair orchestrated that brought Libya in from the cold.
MPs are set to demand the minutes of an extraordinary cloak-and-dagger summit in London between British, American and Libyan spies held three days before Blair announced that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was surrendering his weapons of mass destruction programme.
At the time of the secret meeting in December 2003 at the private Travellers Club in Pall Mall, London – for decades the favourite haunt of spies – Libyan officials were pressing for negotiations on the status of Megrahi, who was nearly three years into his life sentence at a Scottish jail.
Whitehall sources said the issue of Megrahi’s imprisonment was raised as part of the discussions, although it is not clear whether Britain or America agreed to a specific deal over his imprisonment, or a more general indication that it would be reviewed.
MPs are to investigate what was promised by Britain at the talks on December 16, 2003 and the role that Blair played in the affair.
Until now, the controversy over Megrahi’s release last month has centred on discussions between Gordon Brown’s government and the Scottish executive and Libya since 2007, with Blair apparently not involved in any way.
It has also focused on claims that the deal was related to oil deals, with Jack Straw admitting yesterday that BP’s interests in Libya played a “big part”.
But authoritative sources said the seeds for Megrahi’s release were sown in 2003, when Libya made the historic agreement to end its status as a pariah, and that the focus on oil and trade was a “red herring”.
Last night, a spokesman for Blair could not be drawn on the December 2003 meeting. (ANI)
Washington, Sep 5 (ANI): The man who grew up in Daphne, Alabama, as Omar Hammami, but is now reported to be a member of al Qaeda-linked Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab under the name Abu Mansour al-Amriki, told a school newspaper after 9/11 attacks that it was “difficult to believe a Muslim could have done this”.
According to FOX News, eight years later he is professing to launch attacks himself and calling on others to join the fight, as terror-related charges await him at home in Alabama.
Abu Mansour al-Amriki or “The American” has become one of the most recognizable and outspoken voices of terrorist propaganda, the report said.
He has been in war-torn Somalia for several years, fighting the secular government there with a group known as al-Shabaab, which has ties to Al Qaeda and was labeled a terrorist organization by the US Government last year, but only recently has he taken on a starring and jarring role in al-Shabaab’s outreach efforts the report added.
The FBI has been looking into him for several years. In fact, a grand jury in Mobile, Alabama., has already indicted him on charges of providing material support to terrorists, a source said.
Al-Amriki first surfaced in October 2007, when Al-Jazeera TV aired a report about the “common goal” of al Qaeda and hard-line militants in Somalia. The report described al-Amriki as a fighter and military instructor, but he concealed his face with a cloth wrap throughout the report.
In April, he showed his face for the first time, during a highly polished, 30-minute recruitment video posted online. It featured anti-American hip-hop and sporadic images of Osama bin Laden.
In the video, he purportedly led a group of al-Shabaab militants in an ambush of pro-government forces in Somalia.
Speaking about one man killed in the fight, he said: “We need more like him, so if you can encourage more of your children and more of your neighbors, anyone around, to send people like him to this jihad, it would be a great asset for us.” (ANI)
Jerusalem, Sep. 4 (ANI): A senior FBI agent has claimed that Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi must have personally okayed the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people.
Richard Marquise, an FBI veteran who led the US task force probing the December 1988 blast, said it is unthinkable that such a major terrorist attack in a regime like Libya could have been authorized without Gaddafi’s approval.
“If you were a senior minister, would you do this without telling the boss? I doubt it. I have to think [Gaddafi] knew something was going to happen, something that the US would be pissed about, and he said OK,” The Jerusalem Post quoted Marquise, as saying.
He said investigators had tried to pursue the chain of responsibility up through the Libyan hierarchy, but had been unable to muster the necessary evidence.
“We couldn’t make the connections… A lot of names came up… We had names of people in the Libyan hierarchy, buying radios, making inquiries about putting bombs in radios,” Marquise said.
The bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 was hidden in a Toshiba radio cassette player.
“But there was no real overt act [that could serve as the basis for an indictment. It would have been nice to indict the entire Libyan regime, but our system wouldn’t allow for it. It would have been a real struggle to show Gaddafi and others in the chain,” he said.
Marquise said he was also convinced that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the former Libyan intelligence officer who is the only man ever convicted in the attack, was no “rogue” agent.
“It had been hoped that Megrahi would give us the whole story, and go up the chain. That didn’t happen. And Megrahi never talked. He did everything for his leader,” he said. (ANI)
Washington, Sep.2 (ANI): A leading conservative columnist, George Will, has called on the Obama administration to pull American troops out of Afghanistan, and instead focus on fighting from “offshore” by means of “intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, air strikes and small, potent Special Forces units.”
According to the Washington Post, there seems to be some merit in waging an “offshore” war, given the success that has been achieved in neighbouring Pakistan against the Taliban with the help of Predator drone strikes, minimum troop deployment and contractors. The acknowledged U.S. toll: zero dead. That’s in stark contrast to the 813 Americans killed so far in Afghanistan.
Obama faces a key decision in coming weeks on Afghanistan. He has already sent 21,000 additional troops there this year, boosting the U.S. total there to 68,000, along with some 40,000 NATO allies.
US commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal is likely to ask him for more – most likely 10,000 to 20,000 – just as the President wrestles with health-care reform and a still-feeble economy.
Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations, who has been advising General McChrystal, says that drones don’t work everywhere. They can be easily shot down by even a “third-rate air force,” he says.
He also says using drones to eliminate enemy personnel needs good intelligence from sources on the ground, something that would melt away should the Taliban reclaim power.
Biddle isn’t overly concerned about Afghanistan falling, again, into the hands of the Taliban. But he is concerned about its nuclear-armed neighbor.
“At some level, the loss of Afghanistan could be tolerated,” he says. “There’s nothing especially unique about Afghanistan as a haven for striking the U.S. Yemen, Djibouti or Somalia could play that role – there are lots of ill-governed spaces around the world that could. But Afghanistan is unique in its proximity to Pakistan, and its potential role in destabilizing Pakistan if Kabul falls under a Taliban government,” he says.
Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel, says the drone strikes are paying off in Pakistan because of that nation’s “quasi-legitimate government and reasonably effective army” – neither of which Afghanistan has.
But he does call the war “misguided and unnecessary,” and argues the U.S. should work with the country’s tribal chiefs to ensure stability in their respective valleys.
And offshore spy-and-strike capabilities could, at a minimum, keep al-Qaeda off-balance in the region “and optimally destroy whatever entity is engaged in a plot,” Bacevich says. (ANI)
Dubai, Sep.2 (ANI): The Al Arabiya satellite television channel has come up with a popular program titled “Death Making,” that exposes another side of Al Qaeda.
Hosted by female correspondent Rima Salha, the Dubai-based show is heading into its third year on Al Arabiya and aims to influence how the Arab world views Al Qaeda, reports Fox News.
It is a unique program that lets jihadists tell their stories, and then shows the results of their actions.
“It’s not enough to tell you that Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization. You have to understand why, what it means, how everything works, and what the end goal is for them,” Al Arabia’s general manager Abdul Rahman al-Rashed explains.
For her work, Salha, who is Lebanese, gets death threats, including when Osama bin Laden’s number two, Ayman al Zawahiri, singled the show and Al Arabiya out, by weaving video of both into one of his multi-media diatribes against mass media.
Despite the threats, Salah is undeterred. She goes to the jihadists, wherever they are: in refugee camps off limits even to security forces and to Iraq. She and her team convince subjects to talk to them. It’s not easy, but some of these militants apparently think they stand to benefit from a bit of publicity.
The topic of terrorism is so hot that Salha gets attacked from all sides. (ANI)
Washington, Aug. 30 (ANI): The United States had offered ‘millions’ to keep the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, under house arrest in UK, but Scotland went ahead with the controversial decision to release the convicted Lockerbie bomber.
US officials had “very reluctantly” backed a proposal to move Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi from Greenock Prison into some kind of high-security accommodation elsewhere in Scotland, The Independent quoted senior government sources, as saying.
However, the Americans had only consented to the option in a desperate attempt to deter the Scottish Executive from releasing Megrahi on compassionate grounds (due to his terminal prostate cancer) and sending him home to die, the report adds.
“They also made it clear that the US would be willing to contribute millions of dollars to a complicated house arrest operation that would have demanded round-the-clock security to keep the prisoner under guard and protect him from attack,” sources said.
But the Scottish National Party government in Edinburgh eventually chose the option of compassionate release, claiming that police chiefs had ruled that the security implications of house arrest would be “severe.”
However, Strathclyde Police denied last week that they had made any judgement on the proposal, and claimed they had only told the Scottish government how many officers would be needed.
“Our position has consistently been that we wanted to see Megrahi serve out his sentence in Scotland,” an official within the US administration said yesterday.
“It got to the stage [during talks over the release] where we would have agreed to anything that would have kept him under Scottish jurisdiction,” they said. (ANI)
Rawalpindi, Aug.30 (ANI): The Adiala jail special anti-terrorism court has asked the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to produce record of the arrest of Jamil Ahmed, one of the Mumbai terror attacks suspects, by September 1.
Ahmed has sought post-arrest bail on various legal grounds, the Daily Times.
Earlier, the court adjourned the hearing into the trial of five Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militants, including the outfit’s operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, till September 5.
The special Adiala Jail court also restricted the in-camera trial of the five accused of the Mumbai terror attacks citing security reasons.
Though the court’s order has not been made public, sources said it stated that the proceedings would be kept totally secret and ‘not published’ in any manner as the case had implications for ‘national security’ and ‘national interests’.
The trial court also asked the FIA to submit its finding before it during the next hearing.
While Lakhvi is accused of masterminding the attack, the four others, including LeT’s communications expert Zarar Shah, Abu al-Qama, Hamad Amin Sadiq and Shahid Jamil Riaz are being charged as facilitators, manager of funds and for locating hideouts for the attackers Rawalpindi.
Meanwhile, the United States has asked the court to grant permission to attend the trial as ‘observers’.
A US embassy spokesman said American officials have moved an application in the court seeking permission to attend the trial.
It may be recalled that there were at least six US nationals among the 166 people who were killed in the November 26-29, 2008 terror attacks. (ANI)
Copyright © 2013 · eleven40 theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in