Pakistani family stand trial for ‘honour killing’

MONS, Belgium: A Pakistani family of four went on trial on Monday for the “honour killing” of their 20-year-old child and sister, who defied them by living with a Belgian and refusing an arranged marriage.

Sadia Sheikh, a Belgian law student of Pakistani origin, was shot dead by three bullets allegedly fired by her older brother Mudusar on October 22, 2007, when visiting her family in the hopes of patching up their quarrel.

Her parents and sister are accused of aiding and abetting the killing.

The four face sentences of life imprisonment if found guilty by a jury of five women and seven men at a high-profile trial also involving rights groups pleading for gender equality as part of a civil suit at the hearings.

The trial is expected to last three to four weeks.

Sadia Sheikh left the family home to study after her shopkeeper parents tried to arrange a marriage with a cousin living in Pakistan she had never met.

Before moving in with a Belgian man her age named Jean, she was helped by fellow-students and teachers and also spent some time in a centre for victims of domestic violence, where she drew up a will as she felt threatened.

She had nonetheless agreed to visit the family in hopes of making peace the day she was shot.

Her father Tarik Mahmood Sheikh, 61, mother Zahida Parveen Sariya, 59, and sister Sariya, 22, also facing charges of “attempting to arrange a marriage,” have denied involvement in the murder, saying Mudusar, now aged 27, killed his sister in a fit of anger.

Read more »

Posted in: INTERNATIONAL

Afghan team to Pakistan in Rabbani probe: official

KABUL: Afghanistan is sending an official delegation to Pakistan “soon” to investigate the killing of Kabul’s peace envoy, a presidential spokesman said Monday.

Pakistan has agreed to accept the delegation, spokesman Aimal Faizi told reporters, adding that it could leave as early as Tuesday.

Rabbani was assassinated by a turban bomber at his Kabul home in September in a move which stalled efforts to talk peace with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Afghan officials say the killing was planned in Pakistan and carried out by a Pakistani suicide bomber. They have also previously accused Pakistan of refusing to cooperate in the probe.

But at a conference in Istanbul earlier this month, the two sides agreed to cooperate on an investigation into the killing.

“The government of Afghanistan, in order to further investigate the assassination of professor Burhanuddin Rabbani… will soon send a delegation to Pakistan. Pakistan has accepted to receive the delegation,” Faizi said.

“After the pressures that Afghanistan and Turkey put on Pakistan at the Istanbul conference, Pakistan finally agreed to accept our delegation.”

The delegation will feature officials from Afghanistan’s defence and interior ministries, plus its intelligence service.

Read more »

Posted in: INTERNATIONAL

Twenty-two dead as clashes rock Cairo’s Tahrir Square

CAIRO: Fresh clashes erupted on Monday in Cairo’s Tahrir Square between police and protesters demanding the end of military rule, as the death toll climbed to 22 and the spiralling unrest threatened to overshadow the first polls since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster.

Police and military forces sporadically used batons, tear gas and birdshot to try to clear the central square of thousands of protesters demanding for a third straight day that the ruling military cede power to a civilian authority.

But by mid-morning Monday large crowds were again streaming to Tahrir, the symbolic heart of demonstrations that toppled Mubarak in February, correspondents said.

The health ministry said 22 people had died in the violence, kicking off a violent countdown to the country’s November 28 parliamentary elections, the first since the end of former president Mubarak’s 30-year-rule.

“The deaths in (Cairo’s) Tahrir Square and several provinces has reached 22,” since clashes broke out on Saturday, the health ministry said in a statement carried by the official MENA news agency.

Hundreds have also been injured during the protests that broke out in Cairo, Alexandria and the canal city of Suez.

“War in the Square,” read the headline of the state-owned Al-Akhbar, while the liberal Wafd daily said “Egypt is sitting on a volcano.”

The clashes first erupted on Saturday, a day after large crowds staged a peaceful anti-military mass rally at the square, resuming on Sunday and carrying through the night into Monday morning, witnesses and television footage showed.

Police and troops on Sunday seized the square only to be beaten back by protesters who retook it later, as had also happened on Saturday.

An AFP reporter said late on Sunday that on one street protester were throwing stones and petrol bombs at military armoured personnel carriers and riot police.

He said military police had responded with mostly shotgun fire and rubber bullets.

When there was steady fire some protesters began to run while others chanted “Hold fast! Hold fast!” and “We won’t leave!”

There were heavy clashes on side streets leading to the interior ministry as protesters chanted “The people want to topple the field marshal” – Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak’s long-time defence minister who heads the ruling military.

In the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, a funeral procession on Sunday for one of the victims degenerated into clashes with the police who fired volleys of tear gas at mourners, state news agency MENA reported.

In the canal city of Suez, troops fired live rounds into the air to stop protesters from storming a police station in the city centre, also on Sunday.

Protests also broke out in the central cities of Qena and Assiut, a security official said, adding that 55 people had been arrested nationwide.

Egypt’s cabinet, which held crisis talks on Sunday for several hours before moving en masse to the headquarters of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) for another meeting, said in a statement that next week’s parliamentary elections would go ahead.

The SCAF, in a statement read out on state television, said it “regretted” what was happening.

It said it was committed to the elections timetable.

Earlier Mohsen al-Fangari, a member of the council, insisted the election would go ahead as planned and that the authorities were able to guarantee the security.

“We will not give in to calls to delay the elections.

The armed forces and the interior ministry are able to secure the polling stations,” Fangari told a talk show on the Egyptian satellite channel Al-Hayat.

Several prominent political figures and intellectuals, including former UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei, earlier issued a call for a delay to the legislative polls.

They submitted a new transition roadmap which would see an elected constituent assembly draft a constitution and then a presidential election would be held, followed by parliamentary polls.

Friday’s rally, which grouped Islamist and secular activists, called on the military to hand power to a civilian government.

It also demanded more control over the constitution the new parliament is to draft.

Protesters called for the withdrawal of a government document that proposes supra-constitutional principles, which could see the military maintain some control over the country’s affairs and keep its budget from public scrutiny.

The military says it will hand over power after a presidential election, which has yet to be scheduled.

Read more »

Posted in: INTERNATIONAL

No pattern to rogue Afghan attacks: Australian PM

SYDNEY: Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday said Australia would not abandon Afghanistan, despite suffering a spate of deadly attacks by rogue Afghan troops.

In an address to parliament on the decade-old conflict, Gillard said there was no evidence to suggest the attacks, in which four Australians have died this year, were part of a pattern.

In the worst of three incidents this year, an Afghan opened fire on a parade in October, killing three Australians and wounding seven others.

In May, an Australian lance corporal was shot dead by an Afghan with whom he was sharing guard duties at a patrol base in the Chora Valley, and earlier this month an Afghan soldier opened fire on Australians, seriously wounding three.

The attacks have prompted renewed debate about Australia’s involvement in the war, to which it was first committed in late 2001 by then-prime minister John Howard. It withdrew and then redeployed in 2005.

Delivering her annual statement on Afghanistan, Gillard insisted progress was being made and that the 1,550 troops based mostly in the southern province of Uruzgan were on track to hand over the lead role on security by 2014.

“Australia will not abandon Afghanistan,” she said.

Australian troops are training the Afghan National Army’s 4th Brigade and Gillard said the timing on completely handing over to Afghan forces in Uruzgan “may well be complete before the end of 2014” given progress being made there.

While this would lead to a drawing down of Australian forces in the country, she repeated her stance that Canberra would be engaged in Afghanistan through this decade at least.

Gillard said she had discussed a long-term partnership with Afghan President Hamid Karzai during their meeting in Kabul last month, adding the government would consider keeping Special Forces troops there beyond 2014.

Read more »

Posted in: INTERNATIONAL