Pakistanis to visit India over Mumbai prosecution

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani investigators and lawyers will visit India next month to gather more evidence for the prosecution of seven suspects linked to the 2008 Mumbai attacks, they said Monday.

Pakistan indicted seven alleged perpetrators over the attacks but says that its own commission needs to gather more evidence in India.

Delhi has called for “decisive” action from Pakistan against the perpetrators of the attacks and accuses its efforts so far of being a “facade”, saying it has already handed over enough evidence to convict the accused men.

“If all goes well, the visit will take place between February 4 to February 10,” senior public prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali told AFP.

Both sides, he said, agreed that the Pakistani commission could visit India between February 1 to February 10 to cross examine witnesses of the carnage in which 166 people were killed.

But Ali said there is a “possibility that the visit may be delayed” by the death of the lawyer representing alleged mastermind, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi.

The deceased’s son, Khwaja Harris Ahmad, has applied to replace his father and the issue would be taken up by the court on February 4, Ali said.

The commission is made up of two senior prosecutors, a director from the Federal Investigation Agency and five lawyers representing the suspects.

“We can proceed to India before February 10 if our authorities address all the legal requirements,” Ahmad told AFP.

Pakistan had wanted Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving gunman from the Mumbai attacks, to testify.

But Ahmad said Kasab, who has appealed a death sentence in India, was not included on the list of witnesses whom the panel wish to cross-examine.

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Bangladesh court orders seizure of disputed school book

DHAKA: A Bangladesh court has ordered millions of copies of a school textbook to be seized in a dispute over credit for the nation’s 1971 independence struggle, a state prosecutor said Monday.

The high court in Dhaka instructed police to confiscate the book, a compilation of essays taught in high schools, for “distortion” in its account of how the country then known as East Pakistan emerged as Bangladesh.

“The court ruled that the book wrongly said major general Ziaur Rahman was the proclaimer of the country’s independence in 1971,” deputy attorney general Altaf Hossain told AFP.

Bangladesh’s independence remains a bitter political issue as Rahman’s widow is now leader of the opposition, while the country’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is the father of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

“Police have been ordered to confiscate all copies of the books from schools, shops and markets in 15 days,” Hossain said.

The writer, editors and head of the government’s textbook authority have been summoned to the court on February 2, he added.

An angry, decades-long debate about who actually called on the population to launch armed resistance against Pakistan still divides national politics in Bangladesh.

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Syrian troops move to retake Damascus suburbs

DAMASCUS: Syrian troops backed by tanks launched an assault to retake Damascus suburbs from rebels on Sunday, activists said, a day after the Arab League suspended its monitoring mission in Syria because of worsening violence.

They said 19 civilians and rebels were killed as the soldiers in buses and armoured personnel carriers moved in at dawn, along with at least 50 tanks.

The forces of President Bashar al-Assad pushed into the Ghouta area on the eastern edge of Damascus to take part in an offensive in the suburbs of Saqba, Hammouriya and Kfar Batna.

Tanks advanced into the centre of Saqba and Kfar Batna, the activists said, in a move to flush out rebel fighters who had taken over districts just a few kilometres from Mr Assad’s centre of power.

“It’s urban war. There are bodies in the street,” said one activist, speaking from Kfar Batna. Activists said 14 civilians and five insurgents from the rebel ‘Free Syrian Army’ were killed there and in other suburbs.

The escalating bloodshed prompted the Arab League to suspend the work of its monitors on Saturday. Arab foreign ministers, who have urged Mr Assad to step down and make way for a government of national unity, will discuss the crisis on Feb 5.

A Syrian government official was quoted by state media as saying Damascus was surprised by the Arab League decision to suspend monitoring, which would “put pressure on (UN Security Council) deliberations with the aim of calling for foreign intervention and encouraging armed groups to increase violence”.

Mr Assad blames the violence on foreign-backed militants.

State news agency SANA reported funerals on Saturday for 28 soldiers and security force members killed by “armed terrorist groups” in Homs, Hama, Deraa, Deir al-Zor and Damascus province.

Another 24 soldiers were reported killed on Sunday.

SANA said six soldiers were killed in a bombing southwest of Damascus, while the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said 18 soldiers were killed in two attacks by army deserters in the northern province of Idlib.

The SOHR claimed in statements received in Nicosia that at least 66 people were killed on Sunday across the country, including 26 civilians.

Its head, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP that the clashes near Damascus were the fiercest since the revolt broke out in mid-March.

The ‘Free Syrian Army’ said 50 more officers and soldiers turned their back on Mr Assad and in a “steady progression of fighting towards the capital” clashed with army regulars only 8km from Damascus.

“The more the regime uses the army, the more soldiers defect,” Ahmed al-Khatib, a local rebel council member on the Damascus outskirts, told AFP.

Other rebel sources reported heavy fighting in Rankus, 45km from Damascus, and heightened tension in Hama, further to the north.

Rankus was “besieged for the past five days and is being randomly shelled since dawn by tanks and artillery rounds,” rebel Abu Ali al-Rankusi said.

In Hama, pro-regime snipers were deployed on the rooftops, according to activists, with security forces leaving “bodies of dead people with their hands tied behind their backs” on the streets across several neighbourhoods.—Reuters/AFP

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