New York, Sep.19 (ANI) : Pakistani authorities may have filed cases against Lashkar -e-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafeez Mohammad Saeed, the alleged mastermind of the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, but Islamabad’s actions are being considered as a mere ‘hogwash’.
The New York Times, while reporting the actions taken against Saeed, said the ambivalence of Pakistani authorities in cracking down on the LeT’s fouder leader was clear.
The newspaper highlighted that the Pakistan government has never been serious regarding putting a check on Saeed and his covert terror activities being run under the LeT’s charity organization Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD).
“Even after he was placed under house arrest in December, the government took steps to soften the blow, allowing him, for instance, to hold a defiant news conference before his confinement began,” it said.
While the Pakistan government has been maintaining that it is seriously carrying out the probe regarding the 26/11 massacre, and tried to show the same to the international community especially the US by booking Saeed under the anti-terrorism act, its ‘bluff’ was laid bare when Saeed’s lawyer disclosed that the case registered against his client were ‘very weak’.
“I have gone through both the FIRs against Saeed thoroughly. The charges against my client are very weak. He has expressed his views like any other Pakistani,” Saeed’s lawyer AK Dongar told a private television channel.
Pakistani authorities also revealed that they have not received any instructions for arresting Saeed despite the registration of two cases against him. (ANI)
High-priced hooker’s mum dismayed over ex-NY Guv Spitzer’s comeback moves
New York, Sep.2 (ANI): The mother of the high-priced hooker who famously serviced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has expressed dismay over reports that he may consider running for office again less than two years after the sordid sex scandal.
“Only in America,” Ashley Dupre’s mom, Carolyn Capalbo, told The New York Post.
While Spitzer is discussing the possibility of a run next year, Dupre-who was 22 when the self-described “steamroller” of Albany paid to play with her-is struggling to get back on her feet, said Capalbo.
“I really can’t blame him, but at the same time, my daughter’s having a rough go,” she said at the beach, near her home in Wall. “I can imagine she’s not happy about it.”
“He has more credibility than a 22-year-old,” Ashley’s mom said in disbelief.
Capalbo said her daughter had turned down lucrative offers to make a buck off of the scandal, including posing for nude magazines.
Less than 18 months after he left Albany in a prostitution scandal, Spitzer has held informal discussions in recent weeks about the possibility of making a bid for state comptroller or the US Senate seat currently held by Kirsten Gillibrand, sources said.
The hooker-happy Democrat has also discussed his own halfway-decent poll numbers in recent surveys, which have shown him more popular than Gov. Paterson, whose own numbers have tanked.
“He”s weighing it,” said one source.
But Spitzer hasn”t shown any interest in campaigning for the office he briefly held, sources said.
The sources stressed that Spitzer, who also served two terms as state attorney general before his landslide election as governor in 2006, has not engaged in any active discussions with political consultants.
Reached at his father”s real-estate firm, where he has been working since he resigned as governor last spring, Spitzer declined comment.
But a source close to him insisted, “It”s not true,” and two other close associates also insisted he was not interested in running for office again and was looking at a range of other options.
Spitzer quit in disgrace in March 2008 after he was unmasked in Manhattan federal court as “Client 9″ in a prostitution bust involving a major call-girl ring. He was revealed to have paid 4,300 dollars for a romp with escort Ashley Dupre, then 22. (ANI)