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2005 NewsJune 24, 2005Italian judge orders arrest of 13 CIA agents over deportation of imamBy AIDAN LEWIS
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| Gasir Mohammed Mahmoud |
June 21 (Compass) -- Five months after he was forcibly committed to a mental hospital for converting from Islam to Christianity, Gasir Mohammed Mahmoud has been discharged from his locked psychiatric ward in Cairo and set free.
Mahmoud was released June 9 from Cairo’s El-Khanka Hospital for Mental and Neurological Health, where two police officers from his home city of Suez had institutionalized him last January.
Mahmoud, now 31, told Compass last week that the doctor who discharged him called his adoptive mother and asked her to come and collect him from the hospital.
“But she told me not to return to Suez,” Mahmoud said, warning him that he would face problems there, both from his father and the state security police.
Parents Alarmed at Son's Conversion
Adopted as an infant, Mahmoud was raised by the Muslim couple, who were alarmed last December to learn that he had converted to Christianity two years earlier. But his father’s angry appeal to local Muslim sheikhs prompted them to issue death threats against the son for committing apostasy.
After his mother asked local state security police to protect her son from being killed, they subjected Mahmoud to an endless round of interrogations and arrests.
Initially, Mahmoud said, he was questioned “in a decent way” in front of a state security officer named Mohammed Amar. He was then transferred to another official who brought two Muslim sheikhs to talk with him, trying to convince him to return to Islam. After eight days’ detention, eating only food that other detainees shared with him, he was sent to the Suez Security Directorate for an investigation that lasted four days.
Then he was released. Because his only Bible had been destroyed, he stopped at an evangelical church on his way home to ask for another copy. “But they were afraid,” Mahmoud said, “and refused to give me a Bible.”
Shortly after he returned home, a messenger was sent to tell him to meet Mohammed Amar again. When the policeman asked why he had gone to the church again, Mahmoud told him he could not stop himself from going there.
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| Police Torture feet |
Police tortured Mahmoud's feet
“So he started to torture me, to pull off the nails of my toes,” Mahmoud said. “Now I’m still not able to wear shoes because of the pain.” This continued for 18 days, he said. The torture included stripping him naked and dousing him with ice-cold water over and over.
After 15 days at the Suez police station, he was brought before the Suez district attorney, facing charges from his father that his son had beaten him. “How could I do this,” Mahmoud said he asked the district attorney, “while I was being detained by the state security?”
So the district attorney ordered his release, instructing him to report to the local police, to be sure there were no other accusations against him. But four days later, a police lieutenant and commander took Mahmoud by police car to Cairo’s Abbasseya Hospital.
When this psychiatric institution refused to take him, they returned to Suez. Then on January 10, the police committed him to the El-Khanka Hospital, where a medical committee was formed to examine his case.
“Once they put me in a room without any clothes,” Mahmoud recalled. “They filled the room with water, to prevent me from sleeping.” During his confinement, he was beaten at times and given heavy doses of medication twice daily.
Never Allowed to Leave
Mahmoud’s supervising physician, Dr. Nevine, had told him he would never be allowed to leave the hospital unless he came back to Islam. But a round of international publicity released in May focused considerable attention on the case, apparently convincing hospital authorities to discharge him.
Although Mahmoud’s mother reserved a hotel room for him in Cairo after his release, he has since found other lodging through Christian friends in the city.
Egyptian law forbids Muslims the right to change their official religious identity when they become Christians, although non-Muslims can freely convert to Islam and legally change their I.D. cards from Christian to Muslim.
Under the virtual impunity of emergency law regulations, officers of Egypt’s State Security Investigation regularly harass, interrogate and arrest Muslim citizens suspected to have converted to Christianity.
MADRID, Spain (AP) - Police arrested 16 Islamic terror suspects in raids in several cities, including 11 men accused of having ties to Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi's group al-Qaida in Iraq and recruiting people for suicide attacks there, officials said Wednesday.
The 11 were part of a support group for a Syrian-based recruitment network for attacks on U.S. and allied forces, and some of them had said they themselves wanted to become ``martyrs for Islam'' and were awaiting orders to do so, the Interior Ministry said. It did not specify how Spanish authorities learned of these alleged intentions.
Most of the 11 are Moroccan and practically all of them sold drugs and committed robberies to finance the network, the ministry said. They were arrested as part of an investigation that began in 2004.
The other five detainees were described as suspects in last year's train bombing in Madrid.
Some 500 Spanish police took part in raids in Barcelona, Valencia, the southern Andalusia region, and Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the northern coast of Morocco.
Al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq is believed to be responsible for many of the bloodiest terror attacks in the country.
The Spanish Interior Ministry said the 11 detainees belonged to a terrorist network that was established in Spain and linked to Ansar al-Islam, believed to have ties with the group run by al-Zarqawi.
It said the apparent leader of the Spanish group's recruitment activities was a 28-year-old Moroccan named Samir Tahtah, arrested near Barcelona. He coordinated communications with overseas leaders of the network and the sending of recruits to Iraq for terrorist attacks, the statement said.
``Basically, what the police accuse them of is raising money and recruiting people to do activities abroad related with the international jihad,'' or holy war, said Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso.
Some of the other five detainees had close ties to ringleaders of last year's commuter train bombing in Madrid, which killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500. They were arrested Tuesday in Madrid and Barcelona, the statement said.
Mohamed Afalah, a fugitive suspect in the bombings, was believed killed in a suicide attack in Iraq between May 12-19, the statement said, without citing a source. It said the target of the alleged attack was not known.
The arrests were ordered by a judge at the National Court, the Madrid-based tribunal that is the hub of Spain's investigations of Islamic terror cases, including the train bombings and an al-Qaida cell on trial in Madrid. Three of the 24 defendants are charged with helping plot the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
A total of 26 people have been jailed in the train bombings, and more than 70 others have been questioned and released but are still considered suspects.
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syrian forces raided a suspected terrorist hideout near the capital, killing two men, arresting a third and foiling alleged bombing plots that targeted the nation's Justice Palace, the official news agency reported.
A member of the Syrian security forces was killed and another was wounded in the Thursday clash in the Daff al-Shouk suburb of Damascus, according to a late Friday report by SANA.
The group's leader, Abu Omar, and an accomplice were killed and another suspect was arrested, SANA said. Identity cards were found alongside the bodies in the names of Omar Barakat and Arfan Yassin, both Syrian. It was not clear whether the cards belonged to the dead men.
The previously unknown group called itself Jund al-Sham for Jihad and Tawhid.
State-run Syrian TV showed footage from the scene of the confrontation in a rented apartment. The bloodied bodies of two men lay on the floor, one of them partially covered with a blanket. Machine guns, pistols, Jihadist documents and communications equipment, including mobile telephones, were scattered on the floor.
A picture on a Saudi driver's license belonging to Yassin showed a bespectacled man with a black, bushy beard. Next to it lay U.S. dollars and Syrian pounds.
One document described the hierarchy of the group, including emirs in charge of fighters, explosives, missiles and military training. The group also had a civil battalion brigade responsible for kidnappings and assassinations.
One document said the group's jihad should start with countries in the region that are under ``despotic regimes,'' such as Syria, ``Christian Maronite'' Lebanon - the president in the neighboring country is always Maronite Catholic - and Hashemite Jordan.
Attention then should be directed at ``the dictators'' in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iraq, whose ``people have been afflicted with the Crusaders,'' the document said.
SANA said security forces received information several months ago that the group was planning to carry out bombings in an attempt to destabilize security in Damascus and its suburbs. Security forces began surveillance of the group after receiving that information.
SANA said Syrian security troops had earlier discovered and detonated a roadside bomb on the Damascus-Zabadani road.
Terrorist attacks are rare in this tightly controlled Arab country. In April, two gunmen, a policeman and a passer-by died in a clash with security forces in a diplomatic quarter of Damascus.
The attackers are said to have detonated a bomb and then engaged in a 90-minute shootout with police. An abandoned U.N. building took the brunt of the fighting.
That incident was initially described by the Syrian government as a terrorist attack but officials later said the attack was a homegrown, isolated incident.
Meanwhile, a human rights group said four suspected Syrian Islamists had been arrested.
Muhammad al-Imadi, 33, disappeared in August after a ``routine'' visit to the offices of political security, according to the Human Rights Association in Syria. Shortly afterward, witnesses reported that he was hospitalized ``in critical condition,'' the statement said.
It said al-Imadi was suspected of using the Internet to get in touch with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Two of his friends, Abdul-Samad al-Jaja and Firas Hamoud, disappeared with him, the statement said.
Radwan al-Issa, 46, who entered Syria illegally through Turkey, was arrested in Damascus in April on suspicion of extremist activities, the statement said.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (June 8) - Federal authorities arrested a father and son after the younger man allegedly acknowledged that he attended an al-Qaida camp in Pakistan to learn ''how to kill Americans,'' according to published reports.
Hamid Hayat and his father, Umer Hayat, 47, were arrested over the weekend on charges of lying to federal agents, FBI agent John Cauthen confirmed to The Associated Press on Tuesday night.
According to prosecutors, Hamid Hayat trained to use explosives and other weapons, using photographs of President Bush as targets. The Sacramento Bee reported his age as 22; the Los Angeles Times said he is 23.
Umer Hayat was charged in the complaint with lying about his son's involvement and his own financing of the terror camp. His attorney, Johnny Griffin III, called the allegations ''shocking'' but said his client ''is charged with nothing more than lying to an agent.''
The detained men are both U.S. citizens. U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter A. Nowinski denied a bail request for the elder Hayat, saying he was ''a flight risk and a danger to the community.''
''He just returned from Pakistan where he built a new home and contributed financial assistance to an al-Qaida sponsored program training his son and others to kill Americans whenever and wherever they can be found,'' the Bee quoted Nowinski as saying.
Hamid Hayat's attorney was not present for the court hearing, and Nowinski set a bail hearing for him on Friday.
Hamid Hayat recently returned to California from Pakistan. After first denying any link to terrorist camps, Hayat reportedly told agents that he attended al-Qaida camps in 2003 and 2004.
''Hamid advised that he specifically requested to come to the United States to carry out his jihadi mission,'' according to the affidavit. ''Potential targets for attack would include hospitals and large food stores.''
FBI agents raided the Hayat home on Tuesday, family members told the Times. They seized videocassettes, photographs, fax machines, prayer books and other items.
Two other men, Shabbir Ahmed and Mohammed Adil Khan, were being held on immigration violations after meeting separately with Umer Hayat on Saturday, the Bee reported. All four men live in Lodi, about 40 miles south of Sacramento.
06-08-05 08:55 EDT
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - He just wanted his colleagues in the government's legislative arm to discuss the possibility of conducting a study into the feasibility of reversing the ban on women drivers - the only prohibition of its kind in the world.
But Consultative Council member Mohammad al-Zulfa's proposal has unleashed a storm in this conservative country where the subject of women drivers remains taboo.
Al-Zulfa's cell phone now constantly rings with furious Saudis accusing him of encouraging women to commit the double sins of discarding their veils and mixing with men. He gets phone text messages calling on Allah to freeze his blood. Chat rooms bristle with insulting accusations that al-Zulfa is "driven by carnal instincts with 454 horsepower.''
There even have been calls to kick al-Zulfa from the council and strip him of his Saudi nationality.
The uproar may be astounding to outsiders. But in Saudi Arabia, where the religious establishment has the upper hand in defining women's freedoms, the issue touches on the kingdom's strict Islamic lifestyle.
Conservatives, who believe women should be shielded from strange men, say driving will allow a woman to leave home whenever she pleases and go wherever she wishes. Some say it will present her with opportunities to violate Islamic law, such as exposing her eyes while driving or interacting with strange men, like police officers or mechanics.
"Driving by women leads to evil,'' Munir al-Shahrani wrote in a letter to the editor of the Al-Watan daily. "Can you imagine what it will be like if her car broke down? She would have to seek help from men.''
But al-Zulfa contends neither the law nor Islam bans women from driving. Instead, the ban is based on fatwas, or Islamic edicts, by senior clerics who say that any driving by women would create situations for sinful temptation.
It is the same argument used to restrict other freedoms. Without written permission from a male guardian, women may not travel, get an education or work. Regardless of permission, they are not allowed to mix with men in public or leave home without wearing black cloaks, called abayas.
Some 50 women who defied the ban and drove in November 1990 - when U.S. troops were protecting Saudi Arabia during Iraq's invasion of Kuwait - were jailed for one day, their passports were confiscated and they lost their jobs.
The driving prohibition has forced families to hire live-in drivers, who, strangely, are allowed to be alone with women. Al-Zulfa said clerics have deemed this a lesser evil than driving. Women whose families cannot afford to pay $300 to $400 a month for drivers rely on male relatives to take them around.
Al-Zulfa brought up the issue a month ago in an open session of the Consultative Council, an appointed body that acts like a parliament.
The session focused on a new traffic law, and the Council members were discussing government statistics about more than 5,000 traffic deaths each year. They also were discussing the fact that the large number of foreign drivers - about 1 million - have economic repercussions.
"I know that talking about women driving is taboo, so I decided to take advantage of our discussions to bring up the topic,'' said the Western-educated al-Zulfa.
Al-Zulfa, 61, said he proposed that a study be conducted to review the issue, arguing that allowing women behind the wheel would save Saudis both money and lives - since he believes women are cautious drivers.
Al-Zulfa suggested that only women over age 35 or 40 be allowed to drive and only in cities. On highways, he said, they could drive if accompanied by male guardians.
Al-Zulfa put the proposal in writing and sent it to the council's presidency so it can appoint a date for discussing it. But apparently worried about the conservatives' reaction, council head, Sheik Saleh bin Humaid, has not responded.
Despite the harsh outcry, not all the reaction has been negative.
Abdulrahman al-Rashed, a Saudi who is general manager of Al-Arabiya television, wrote in a recent column in Asharq al-Awsat paper: "It's inconceivable that in a country of 25 million, a third of them are women who wait for a driver every day to take them to school, the hospital and relatives' homes.''
Many women activists also welcomed al-Zulfa's suggestion. But others lashed out at him for using the issue to project himself as a reformer.
In a strongly worded article, Wajiha al-Huweidar said Saudi women will not allow "the intellectuals to shine and their names to glitter at our expense.
"We will not permit anyone and we have not appointed anyone to speak on our behalf,'' she said.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - A bomb from a suicide attacker tore through a mosque during Wednesday's funeral for a Muslim cleric opposed to the Taliban, killing at least 20 people, and the local governor said an al-Qaida-linked militant was responsible.
At least 42 people were wounded.
The attack - which came on the heels of a major upsurge in rebel violence in recent months including assassinations, near-daily clashes with rebels and the kidnapping of an Italian aid worker - further raised fears that militants here were copying the tactics of insurgents in Iraq.
The militants themselves have suffered a heavy price - losing about 200 men, according to American and Afghan officials - but the drumbeat of attacks has belied U.S. claims it is stabilizing the country, nearly four years after driving the Taliban from power.
Kandahar Gov. Gul Agha Sherzai said the suicide bomber's body had been found and he was part of Osama bin Laden's terror network.
"The attacker was a member of al-Qaida. We have found documents on his body that show he was an Arab,'' Sherzai told reporters.
Kandahar was a stronghold of the hard-line Taliban regime that was ousted from power in late 2001 by U.S.-led forces for harboring bin Laden.
The British Broadcasting Corp. reported that it received a call from a man claiming to be a Taliban member who said the movement was responsible for the attack. It did not identify the caller or say if the report had been verified.
But a purported Taliban spokesman, Mullah Latif Hakimi, said in a telephone call to The Associated Press that the group was not responsible for the bombing.
Hakimi often calls news organizations, usually to claim responsibility for attacks on behalf of the Taliban. His information has sometimes proven untrue or exaggerated, and his exact tie to the group's leadership is unclear.
Hundreds of mourners were crowded inside the Mullah Abdul Fayaz Mosque in Kandahar, the main southern city, when the bomb exploded at about 9 a.m., leaving blood and body parts littered over a wide area.
Interior Ministry spokesman Latfullah Mashal said the capital's police commander, Gen. Akram Khakrezwal, was killed along with other police officers attending the funeral. Mashal said it was a suicide bombing.
Kandahar's deputy police chief, Gen. Salim Khan, said the explosion occurred near where people remove their shoes before praying.
Nanai Agha was inside the mosque at the time of the blast but survived because he was behind a wall when the bomb detonated.
"I was knocked unconscious by the blast,'' he said. "When I woke up, so many people were killed or wounded. People were running around, some were lying on the ground crying. Dead bodies were everywhere.''
Nazir Ahmadzai, a doctor at Kandahar Hospital, said 20 people were killed and 45 wounded - many of them Khakrezwal's bodyguards. The hospital's director, however, said 72 people were wounded, four gravely.
"The wounded are telling me that a suicide attacker entered the mosque and then blew himself up,'' hospital chief Mohammed Hashim Alokozai said.
Mashal, the Interior Ministry spokesman, denounced the attack as an atrocity against both the nation and Islam.
"They are the enemies of peace and the enemies of Islam,'' he said. "Attacking Muslims while they are offering prayers and performing religious ceremonies is completely against Islam, against our country.''
Col. James Yonts, the U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, said the attack was an "atrocious act of violence upon innocent civilians and a mosque.''
Many local leaders had been expected to attend the funeral of Mullah Abdul Fayaz, the top Muslim leader in the province, whom the mosque is named after.
Fayaz, a supporter of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai, was gunned down in Kandahar on Sunday by suspected Taliban gunmen - a week after he led a call for people not to support the militant group.
Even before the blast, security was tight. Afterward, more police were deployed around the mosque, the main city hospital and other sites around the city.
In a second attack Wednesday, a bomb exploded on a bridge west of Kandahar as a group of Afghan deminers were driving over it, killing two and wounding five others, said Patrick Fruchet, spokesman for the U.N. Mine Action Center for Afghanistan.
The seven were working on a project funded by the Japanese government, he said.
Kandahar has been targeted by bombs in the past.
On March 17, a roadside blast killed five people and wounded more than 30. Authorities blamed anti-government rebels for the attack, which took place as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in the capital, Kabul, about 280 miles to the north.
In January 2004, a bomb attached to a bicycle killed at least 15 people, most of them children, and injured dozens more in the city. Authorities blamed Taliban militants.
Bulgaria's president has visited children with HIV in Libya, during a trip aimed at saving Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death for infecting them.
President Georgi Parvanov toured the hospital in the city of Benghazi - where the outbreak occurred in 1999.
Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were convicted of deliberately giving tainted blood to 430 children. Some 50 are believed to have died.
Libya's Supreme Court is due to rule on an appeal by the six on Tuesday.
The nurses and the doctor - who have spent six years in jail - say they were initially tortured into making false confessions.
Angry parents
Mr Parvanov said he had visited the infected children in Benghazi in eastern Libya "to show solidarity" with their plight.
Relatives of the victims said he promised that Bulgaria would help the EU provide the city's hospital with expertise to treat HIV.
After visiting the children, Mr Parvanov returned to the capital Tripoli where he met the five nurses.
Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelrahman Shalgam has said the death penalty against the nurses could be dropped if all parties involved reached a consensus.
But as Mr Parvanov arrived in the country on Friday, relatives of the children held a protest at Tripoli airport, calling for the death of the nurses.
Bulgaria has so far opposed paying compensation on the grounds that it would be tantamount to admitting the nurses, who say they are innocent, were in fact guilty.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - A suicide bomber struck Friday at a Muslim shrine packed with Shiite worshippers and close to the U.S. Embassy, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens.
After the blast, hundreds of Shiite pilgrims, beating their chests in mourning, clashed with baton-wielding police, who charged the crowd to clear the way for ambulances. Some of the Shiite protesters chanted, "Down with America!''
The explosion at the Bari Imam shrine, the burial place of a historic saint on the outskirts of Islamabad, was the latest attack on a religious gathering in Pakistan, which has a long history of violent sectarian rivalry. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Witnesses said the bomb went off in an open space on the final day of the five-day festival to commemorate an Islamic saint who is buried at the shrine. The festival is attended each year by thousands of Sunni and minority Shiite Muslims.
The blast ripped through a congregation of hundreds of Shiites under a canvas tent put up to shade them from the sun. They were preparing for the arrival of Shiite leader, Hamid Moasvi, a vehement critic of the U.S.-led war on terrorism, who was about to deliver a sermon.
"There was an announcement that Hamid Moasvi is coming. Everybody stood up and then there was the explosion,'' said Mohammed Ali, who was among the congregation. "Afterward, you couldn't identify anyone. Some had their legs blown off, some had their hands blown off. I lifted so many of the people and my clothes were soaked with blood.''
Moasvi was not hurt, witnesses said.
Police immediately cordoned off the shrine, which is about a half-mile from the U.S. Embassy and the official residence of Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaida, condemned the blast and appealed to his countrymen to unite "against religious terrorism, sectarianism and extremism.''
An AP photographer at the shrine counted at least 20 bodies, many of them in pieces, scattered over about 50 yards, making it hard to give an exact figure. An intelligence officer said at least 20 people were killed and 150 were wounded.
Another government official, Tariq Pirzada, said at least 18 people were killed and 86 others injured in the explosion, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan news agency reported.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said it was a suicide attack and blamed "enemies of Pakistan and Islam.''
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned the bombing and urged authorities to "spare no effort'' in finding the perpetrators, Annan spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
Ali Ahmad, an injured worshipper, said he had seen a man dressed in a police uniform who appeared to be the bomber walk inside the tent as worshippers recited the Quran. Police tried to stop the man but failed to prevent the attack, he said.
But another witness, S.M. Shirazi, said two bearded men he thought were the bombers entered the gathering and sat near a podium at the front. With the blast, he saw the body of one of them shoot through the roof of the tent.
Sectarian attacks are common in Pakistan. Sunnis make up about 80 percent of its 150 million people, and Shiites about 17 percent. Most live peacefully together, but extremist elements on both sides have a violent agenda. The schism dates back to a 7th century dispute over who was the true heir to the Prophet Mohammed.
In February, a gun battle at a funeral procession near the Bari Imam shrine left three dead. That violence was believed linked to a feud between two families over control of the shrine, one of the most famous in the country.
The most recent major assault on a religious gathering in Pakistan was a bombing at a village shrine to a Shiite saint in Baluchistan province on March 19 that killed 46 people.
"None of the bodies was intact,'' said Dr. Wahid Abbas, who helped treat the wounded. "Some had legs blown off. Some had their hands blown off.''
Mukhtar Kazmi, running a free clinic at the shrine for the five-day annual festival, said it treated about 200 people.
"It was like hell,'' said worshipper Syed Muktar Hussain Shah, 40. "I fell down ... when I woke up I saw dead bodies around me.''
Witness Shabbir Hussain said there was panic after the blast.
"People were shouting, 'Leave the place! There might be another explosion!'''
Sectarian attacks by Sunni and minority Shiites are common in this Islamic country. The schism between the two sects dates back to a 7th-century dispute over who was the true heir to the Prophet Mohammed.
Associated Press reporters Matthew Pennington and Munir Ahmad contributed to this report.
QUEBEC (AP) - Quebec on Thursday rejected the use of Islamic tribunals to settle family disputes, with one legislator saying that Sharia law could isolate the Muslim community in the French-speaking province.
The debate over Sharia law surfaced in Canada two years ago when a Muslim group in Ontario proposed the arbitration of family disputes according to Islamic law.
The Quebec legislature on Thursday passed a motion against allowing Sharia, or Islamic, law to be used in the legal system.
"The application of Sharia in Canada is part of a strategy to isolate the Muslim community, so it will submit to an archaic vision of Islam,'' said Fatima Houda-Pepin, a Liberal member of the legislature.
Under Ontario's Arbitration Act, parties who wish to avoid the courts by choosing arbitration to resolve family law and inheritance issues may be allowed to make use of religious tribunals.
The 1991 Act said religious laws must be bound by Canada's secular ones, but some conservative Muslim groups have tried to push the legislation to enforce Sharia, a code of conduct based on the Muslim holy book, the Quran.
Opponents of Sharia law in Canada say that the country's 750,000 Muslims come from different backgrounds and strains of Islam. Under most interpretations, women's rights to seek divorce are limited.
Reuters (25.05.2005)/ HRWF Int. (26.05.2005) – Website: www.hrwf.net- A judge has ordered best-selling writer and journalist Oriana Fallaci to stand trial in her native Italy on charges she defamed Islam in a recent book.
The decision angered Italy's justice minister but delighted Muslim activists, who accused Fallaci of inciting religious hatred in her 2004 work "La Forza della Ragione" (The Force of Reason).
Fallaci lives in New York and has regularly provoked the wrath of Muslims with her outspoken criticism of Islam following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. cities.
In "La Forza della Ragione," Fallaci wrote that terrorists had killed 6,000 people over the past 20 years in the name of the Koran and said the Islamic faith "sows hatred in the place of love and slavery in the place of freedom."
State prosecutors originally dismissed accusations of defamation from an Italian Muslim organization, and said Fallaci should not stand trial because she was merely exercising her right to freedom of speech.
But a preliminary judge in the northern Italian city of Bergamo, Armando Grasso, rejected the prosecutors advice at a hearing on Tuesday and said Fallaci should be indicted.
Grasso's ruling homed in on 18 sentences in the book, saying some of Fallaci's words were "without doubt offensive to Islam and to those who practice that religious faith."
Muslims hail decision
Adel Smith, a high-profile Muslim activist who brought the original law suit, hailed the decision.
"It is the first time a judge has ordered a trial for defamation of the Islamic faith," he told reporters. "But this isn't just about defamation. We would also like (the court) to recognize that this is an incitement to religious hatred."
Justice Minister Roberto Castelli, who has a prickly relationship with the Italian judiciary, said the ruling represented an attack on freedom of expression.
"In Europe we are seeing the birth of a movement that is looking to silence those who don't follow a single mindset, within which it is forbidden to speak ill of Islam, of homosexuals or of the children of homosexuals," Castelli was quoted as saying in an interview with Radio Padania.
"In Fallaci's book there is very strong criticism but not defamation," Italian news agency ANSA quoted him as saying.
There was no immediate comment from Fallaci who is in her 70s and suffers from cancer.
Just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Fallaci published "La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio" ("The Rage and the Pride"), in which she said the West was superior to Islamic society and complained that Muslim immigrants had "multiplied like rats."
The book sold more than one million copies in Italy and at least 500,000 elsewhere in Europe.
Fallaci received numerous death threats following its launch and "La Forza della Ragione" was billed as her response to the outpouring of anger.
No date was set for the opening of the defamation trial.
JALALPUR, Bangladesh - A Baptist lay pastor has been beheaded in Bangladesh, the second Christian leader to lose his life in that country in a year, according to a Christian news organization.
Dulal Sarkar, 35, was attacked as he returned home from discussing his faith with local villagers, reported Compass Direct, which tracks incidents of Christian persecution. One source later identified the assailants as a group of 10 local Muslim extremists. After reporting the incident, Sarkur's wife, mother and five children have been forced to move from place to place in fear for their lives.
According to local Christians, three arrests have been made, but the remaining seven alleged attackers, who reportedly have ties to the Jamaat-e-Islami political party, are still at large. They fear the political influence of Jamaat-e-Islami may prevent the case from going to court, Compass Direct reported.
Meanwhile, Sarkur's widow has asked a Christian orphanage to take three of their five children because she cannot afford to support them.
The incident is the second beheading in a year, the news service said. Abdul Gani, a prominent Christian and physician, reportedly was decapitated by a gang in the district of Jamalpur as he returned home from work in September 2004. Gani was a counsel member of the Bangladesh Baptist Fellowship.
In 2003 another Christian leader was murdered by a group of eight men who attacked him in his home. Christian evangelist Hridoy Roy was stabbed repeatedly after being tied "crucifixion style" to his bed. Roy was known for showing the Jesus film and others about the life of Christ. Muslim neighbors reportedly had warned him to stop.
Bangladesh has suffered from religious disharmony since 1971, when the nation was split from Pakistan. The country is approximately 83 percent Muslim and 16 percent Hindu. Buddhists and Christians make up the remaining 1 percent. Islam was declared the official state religion in 1998.
The current government is a coalition of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and three other Islamic parties. The third largest party, Jamaat-e-Islami, reportedly wants to make Bangladesh an entirely Islamic nation.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - A ground-breaking Afghan television host whose Western style drew praise from youthful fans and condemnation from Muslim clerics may have been slain with involvement from her own brothers, police said Friday.
Shaima Rezayee, 24, who tossed aside her burqa for Western dress and became a host on an MTV-style music show, knew her life was in danger, according to a radio interview she gave not long before she was shot in the head at her Kabul home Wednesday.
Her slaying highlights the struggle between urban young people and their conservative elders for the future of Afghanistan and its Islamic values. Television and radio stations like the one that featured Rezayee - often importing music and styles from other countries - have been leaders in probing the boundaries of acceptability.
Rezayee, like other young Afghan women, was denied schooling and forced to wear the burqa in public until the Taliban regime was ousted by the U.S. invasion in late 2001. The Taliban also banned music - even humming on the street.
In the years since, several private television and radio stations have started broadcasting. Many operate under tight security, well aware of criticism from religious leaders who oppose women in Western dress, women working, or women singing publicly.
The station that featured Rezayee, Tolo TV, has in particular drawn fire. In March, the country's council of Islamic scholars criticized Tolo and other stations for transmitting "programs opposed to Islam and national values.''
Tolo TV executives dismissed Rezayee that same month under pressure from conservative clerics.
Her hour-long show, "Hop,'' showed videos of Western singers such as Madonna, as well as Turkish and Iranian pop stars. The casual chat between male and female announcers on Rezayee's show also drew reproach. Marriages are still mostly arranged in Afghanistan and some regard as suspect even conversation between men and women who are not related.
Soon after she was dismissed, Rezayee said in a radio interview that she had heard rumors someone wanted to kill her, possibly because of the show.
Tolo TV was the brainchild of an Afghan who returned to his homeland from Australia after the fall of the Taliban and first opened Radio Arman, an extremely popular station.
Rezayee was the first journalist to be killed in Afghanistan since the end of the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 which ousted the Taliban regime, according to Reporters Without Borders.
"This horrible murder proves that press freedom still cannot be taken for granted in Afghanistan,'' the Paris-based group said, calling for a thorough investigation and concrete measures by President Hamid Karzai to support free expression.
Jamil Khan, head of the criminal investigation department for Kabul police, declined to comment on a possible motive for the killing, but said police would question Rezayee's two brothers after mourning ceremonies conclude early next week.
"We suspect family members may be involved in the murder,'' he said. He didn't elaborate and relatives could not be immediately reached for comment.
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BAGHDAD (May 19) - Gunmen killed an Oil Ministry official on Thursday and escalating violence claimed at least 18 more lives, fueling fears Iraq may be moving toward civil war.
Reuters
Residents view the damage after a car bomb attack in Baquba, Iraq. Two policemen
were killed.
The oil official, Ali Hameed, was shot outside his home as he left for work, a police official said.
Mainly Sunni Muslim insurgents have stepped up attacks on officials and security forces since a Shiite-led government was announced last month. They have killed more than 500 people in a campaign that has challenged government promises of stability.
In the worst violence on Thursday, seven people were killed in clashes in the northern city of Mosul after insurgents attacked the house of a local Sunni Muslim politician, witnesses and hospital officials said.
The politician, Fawwaz al-Jarba, said his driver and three guards were among the dead. He said U.S. troops backed by helicopters responded to his request for help.
In Baghdad, a university professor was shot dead, an Iraqi soldier was killed in a suicide bombing, and four other Iraqi soldiers were kidnapped. A roadside bomb also killed an American soldier in the capital, the U.S. military said.
The escalation in violence has raised concerns the country could erupt into a full-scale civil war. Discoveries of people killed execution-style and dumped at various sites -- 50 have been found since Saturday -- have stirred sectarian passions.
Most victims were Shiite Muslims but some were Sunnis.
Four more bodies were found on Thursday, this time just south of Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit. Police said they had been shot dead.
A funeral service was held for Muhammad al-Allaq, a Shiite cleric who was gunned down on Wednesday, relatives said.
Top Sunni cleric Harith al-Dhari has publicly accused the Badr Brigades, the militia of the main Shi'ite political party, of assassinating Sunni preachers.
It was the first time Dhari publicly accused the armed wing of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which was part of the Shi'ite coalition that won a majority in parliament in the historic Jan. 30 elections.
Dhari's Muslim Clerics Association called for a three-day closure of Sunni mosques in protest at the killings and warned that Sunnis would not keep silent.
The top Badr Brigades official denied the accusations and said Sunnis and Shi'ites should avoid sectarian strife.
Shiite Arabs and Kurds, who dominate Iraq's parliament, have promised to give Sunni Arabs a key role in politics and in drafting a new constitution, even though the Sunni Arab minority won only 17 of parliament's 275 seats.
Sunni Arabs were the most powerful group in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's rule, but largely stayed away from the January elections and make up the backbone of the insurgency.
So far, most Shi'ites have heeded calls by moderate clerics to show restraint in the face of suicide bombings and insurgent attacks that have killed thousands. But the recent explosion of violence has raised questions over their patience.
In Mosul, hospital officials said two people were killed when a bomb exploded prematurely in the car they were driving on a suicide mission. In the northern town of Baiji, four soldiers from the Iraqi army were kidnapped at dawn.
Police said a roadside bomb killed two policemen in Baquba, and a police officer and his father were shot dead traveling in their car in Samarra.
Many of the deadliest attacks have been blamed on Al-Qaida's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who called for suicide attacks against U.S. forces to be stepped up in an audiotape message attributed to him on Wednesday.
He also defended the killing of "innocent Muslims" in suicide bombings, saying it was legitimate in a holy war.
Zarqawi's followers issued a new warning against Iraqi forces on Thursday in leaflets in Baiji, residents said.
"Leave your jobs within four hours otherwise you will get yourself killed," said the leaflets hung on mosques.
MADRID, Spain (AP) - A Spanish judge indicted 13 suspected Islamic extremists Wednesday on charges of belonging to al-Qaida and said some of them probably took part in last year's train bombings in Madrid.
The indictment said the suspects, mostly Moroccans, had formed two terror cells in 2002 - one in Morocco and one in Madrid - and concluded that after Spain sent peacekeeping troops to Iraq that year, the country was "an enemy of Islam and therefore it was necessary to stage an attack'' in Spain.
The 13 men were arrested in raids starting last October after police claimed to have foiled a planned suicide truck bombing to blow up the National Court, the hub of Spain's investigation of Muslim extremism, including last year's train bombings in Madrid.
However, the indictment issued by Judge Fernando Grande-Marlaska did not specifically accuse them of planning to destroy the court. It only charged them with belonging to a terrorist group, namely al-Qaida. Mohamed Achraf, the jailed Algerian suspected of masterminding that plot, was not among those indicted Wednesday.
Four of the 13 men indicted are fugitives. Eight are in jail in Spain and one is in prison in Morocco in connection with bombings in the Moroccan city of Casablanca in May 2003.
The cells were formed in 2002 by that jailed man, Mustafa Maymouni, who was recruited by fugitive Moroccan Amer Azizi, a suspect in both the Madrid train bombings and Sept. 11, the 10-page indictment said.
In Madrid, the cell held long meetings at which members discussed how to wage holy war, or jihad. The sessions continued after Maymouni left Spain in May 2003 and was arrested in Morocco, and "with a high degree of probability'' some of those indicted Wednesday took part in the train bombings, the judge said.
"The reasons they gave for defending jihad were that Muslims were persecuted by infidels, mainly in England, the United States and Spain, so they had to make them suffer through bombings, robbing them, blowing themselves up or any other way that would harm them anywhere in the world,'' the indictment said.
The indictment said the Madrid cell also included two key suspects in the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid - Moroccan Jamal Zougam and Egyptian Rabei Osman.
But the judge said he is not indicting them in this case because they are already under investigation over the train bombings, which killed 191 people. No indictments have yet been issued over that attack.
The same applies to Moroccan Driss Chebli, currently on trial in Madrid as one of 24 suspected members of another al-Qaida cell. He and two other suspects are charged specifically with helping plot the Sept. 11 attacks.
WASHINGTON, (May 16) - Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it erred in a May 9 report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article.
Editor Mark Whitaker said the magazine inaccurately reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the Muslim holy book down the toilet.
The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza. In the past week it was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League.
On Sunday, Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States.
''We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst,'' Whitaker wrote in the magazine's latest issue, due to appear on U.S. newsstands on Monday.
The weekly news magazine said in its May 23 edition that the information had come from a ''knowledgeable government source'' who told Newsweek that a military report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay said interrogators flushed at least one copy of the Koran down a toilet in a bid to make detainees talk.
But Newsweek said the source later told the magazine he could not be certain he had seen an account of the Koran incident in the military report and that it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts.
Whitaker told Reuters that Newsweek did not know if the reported toilet incident involving the Koran ever occurred. ''As to whether anything like this happened, we just don't know,'' he said in an interview. ''We're not saying it absolutely happened but we can't say that it absolutely didn't happen either.''
INCIDENT UNDER INVESTIGATION
The acknowledgment by the magazine came amid heightened scrutiny of the U.S. media, which has seen a rash of news organizations fire reporters and admit that stories were fabricated or plagiarized.
The Pentagon told the magazine the report was wrong last Friday, saying it had investigated earlier allegations of Koran desecration from detainees and found them ''not credible.''
Newsweek reported that Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita reacted angrily when the magazine asked about the source's continued assertion that he had read about the Koran incident in an investigative report. ''People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?'' DiRita told Newsweek.
The May 9 report, which appeared as a brief item by Michael Isikoff and John Barry in the magazine's ''Periscope'' section, had a huge international impact, sparking the protests from Muslims who consider the Koran the literal word of God and treat each book with deep reverence.
Desecration of the Koran is punishable by death in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Newsweek, which said opponents of the Afghan government including remnants of the Taliban had used its report to fan unrest in the country, said it was not contemplating disciplinary action against staff.
''This was reported very carefully, with great sensitivity and concern, and we'll continue to report on it,'' said Newsweek Managing Editor Jon Meacham. ''We have tried to be transparent about exactly what happened, and we leave it to the readers to judge us.''
U.S. officials opened an investigation but maintained that members of the Guantanamo security force were sensitive to the religious beliefs and practices of the detainees in U.S. custody.
U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley earlier on Sunday stressed the report had not been confirmed. ''If it turns out to be true, obviously we will take action against those responsible,'' Hadley said on CNN's ''Late Edition.''
Newsweek's Whitaker said that when the magazine first heard of the Koran allegation from its source, staff approached two Defense Department officials. One declined to comment, while the other challenged a different aspect of the May 9 story but did not dispute the Koran charge.
The magazine said other news organizations had already aired charges of Koran desecration based ''only on the testimony of detainees.''
''We believed our story was newsworthy because a U.S. official said government investigators turned up this evidence. So we published the item,'' Whitaker said.
''Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Koran incident in the report we cited,'' he wrote.
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - A former computer science professor and three others are going on trial on charges they helped fund a terrorist group that carried out a bombing in Israel. Jury selection begins today.
Ten years ago, American student Alisa Flatow boarded a bus headed to a Gaza Strip beach resort for a much needed break from her studies. At the Israeli settlement of Kfar Darom, a young man sat in a van loaded with explosives. As the bus approached, he steered his rolling bomb at it with ferocious speed and slammed into the bus' side. Eight people - seven Israelis and Flatow - died in the April 9, 1995, terrorist attack.
Now her parents are looking for justice half a world away in Tampa, Fla. Sami Al-Arian, a University of South Florida professor and nationally known Palestinian rights activist, was already secretly under investigation by FBI foreign intelligence agents at the time of the bombing.
Al-Arian had established an Islamic academic think tank, a school, a mosque and a charity for Palestinian children - but authorities were questioning whether the true mission of Al-Arian's work was to finance terrorist attacks in Israel.
In a 53-count indictment, Al-Arian, Sameeh Hammoudeh, Hatim Naji Fariz and Ghassan Zayed Ballut are accused of racketeering, conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists. Five other men have been indicted but are still at large.
The men face life in prison if convicted of charges they used Al-Arian's think tank and charity as fundraising fronts for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
"These people, they have no respect for life,'' said Alisa Flatow's father, Stephen Flatow of West Orange, N.J. "They will continue to pick on innocent people just to accomplish their means. That's why this trial is so important. You have to send a message.''
Al-Arian is alternately viewed as a crusader for Palestinian rights who is being persecuted for his unpopular views and as a terrorist who hid behind a veil of legitimacy while secretly financing deadly attacks thousands of miles away.
"Much of what people are saying about Sami Al-Arian could have been said likewise about Nelson Mandela,'' attorney William Moffitt said.
"Now Nelson Mandela is a hero for having supported his people. Sami Al-Arian is a villain for being the voice of the Palestinian people. There aren't really a lot of voices in this country who have spoken favorably for the Palestinian people.''
Prosecutors contend there is direct evidence of Al-Arian's involvement with actual attacks. The indictment alleges that in 1993, Al-Arian sent four wire transfers of nearly $2,000 each to the relatives of four convicted Islamic Jihad terrorists who had been convicted of the murder of three Israelis.
They point to video from the early 1990s in which a fiery Al-Arian shouts "Death to Israel'' or when he shared the stage with Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric convicted for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Al-Arian's attorneys question how a supposedly dangerous terrorist financier could have gained access to the White House and met with Presidents Clinton and Bush.
Nearly two dozen other prominent political and government leaders from both parties - Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Trent Lott, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and House Speaker Dennis Hastert among them - are reported by Al-Arian's attorneys to have had contact with him.
If Al-Arian "is supposedly this awful terrorist, how did he get so close to these people is a really interesting question,'' Moffitt said. He declined to elaborate on Al-Arian's prominent connections, calling them a key component of the defense.
The prosecution said more important than his well-placed contacts are the shadowy figures with whom Al-Arian did business.
Chief among them is Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, one of the five indicted co-conspirators who has not yet been arrested. Al-Arian brought Shallah to the University of South Florida to run the think tank, the World and Islam Studies Enterprise. Shallah abruptly left Tampa in mid-1995 and resurfaced in Damascus as the Islamic Jihad's new leader.
Stephen Flatow, who has been subpoenaed to testify, said he was not told until 2003 that agents believed there was a connection between Al-Arian and the bombing that killed his daughter.
"I felt very, very good our government was finally standing up for Americans who are killed by other Americans on the other side of the world,'' he said. "If someone is going to provide the means to commit a crime, you are just as guilty as the person who pulled the plunger. If anything, these guys are cowards.''
Patient must return to Islam to be discharged.
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May 13 (Compass) -- An Egyptian convert from Islam to Christianity is being held against his will in a Cairo mental hospital, where supervising doctors have told him he must stay unless he recants his faith and returns to Islam.
Gaser Mohammed Mahmoud, 30, was committed to the El-Khanka Hospital for Mental and Neurological Health in early January by his adoptive parents, after they learned he had become a Christian two years earlier.
Since his forced confinement, he reportedly has been beaten, whipped and given potentially fatal injections by hospital personnel.
Locked in Solitary
After a failed escape attempt, Mahmoud was locked into a solitary room for a month by his nurses, who had learned that he was being institutionalized for apostasy. Although he was allowed visitors initially, the hospital has since refused to admit any known Christian acquaintances asking to see him.
Earlier this week, Mahmoud told Compass that he had first admitted to his mother that he was a Christian six months ago. Angered, his father notified local Muslim sheikhs, who in turn reportedly threatened to kill him.
To prevent this, his mother called local state security police officials, who took him into protective custody on a day-time basis, allowing him to return home at night. But at her husband’s insistence, she finally agreed to commit him to the El-Khanka Hospital, located on the northern outskirts of Cairo.
Abandoned at a Church
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A foundling who was adopted as an infant by the childless Muslim couple, Mahmoud grew up in the Red Sea port city of Suez, 290 miles east of Cairo. Although he does not know the identity of his birth parents, he was told he had been found abandoned in front of a church in Suez.
He finished school and started working, earning good money in an automobile tire workshop. Eventually Mahmoud’s adoptive father became jealous of the young man’s income and had him jailed for a year on accusations of robbery.
Trauma Leads to Jesus
Once he returned home from prison, Mahmoud was so traumatized psychologically that his mother asked some Muslim sheikhs to come and recite the Quran for him. “But I felt like I was getting worse,” Mahmoud said, “until I had a dream of Jesus Christ drawing crosses of light.”
The distraught young man began to read about Jesus. Soon afterward, a Muslim neighbor advised him to listen to Christian radio programs broadcast from Monte Carlo. As his understanding of the Christian faith grew, Mahmoud began attending a small home fellowship of Christians.
At one point, he went to a nearby village and met with a Coptic monk, who advised him to keep quiet about his belief in Christ. But he said that eventually, “My new love for Jesus pushed me to talk with my mother about it.”
Scoffing at his enthusiasm for Christianity, his mother retorted that even a Coptic priest’s wife had recently embraced Islam, referring to a highly publicized incident last December when the Coptic Christian community accused a Muslim of abducting and trying to convert the middle-aged woman.
“At that point, I told her, ‘I’m a Christian,’” Mahmoud said. He admitted that he had gone so far as to draw a cross on the walls of their apartment.
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So with the assistance of local state security police, Mahmoud’s mother bowed to her husband’s pressure and committed their son to forced confinement in the El-Khanka Hospital on January 10.
“Muslim Fanatic” Doctor
Under the supervision of Dr. Mohsen, director of the hospital’s medical committee, Mahmoud was subjected to psychiatric examination and placed in Section Three, a closed ward for mental patients.
He has remained there ever since, under the care of a woman physician identified only as Dr. Nevine. Sources who have visited Mahmoud described Dr. Nevine as a “fanatic Muslim” who had treated him “badly” for deserting Islam.
“You won’t get out of here until you change your mind,” she reportedly told Mahmoud. He has not been allowed to leave his assigned ward for the past three months, nor has he been able to learn the names of the medications he is given every morning and evening.
Egypt’s Muslim citizens do not have the legal right to change their religion, although non-Muslims are allowed freely to convert to Islam and change their official religious identity. Officers of Egypt’s State Security Investigation regularly harass, interrogate and sometimes arrest Muslims suspected to have converted to Christianity.
Cairo’s El-Khanka Hospital earned international notoriety in 1997, when an escaped patient claimed he had bribed his way out of the mental institution to launch a terrorist attack in Cairo which killed nine German tourists and their Egyptian driver.
ANDIJAN, Uzbekistan (AP) - Soldiers opened fire on thousands of protesters in eastern Uzbekistan on Friday after demonstrators stormed a jail to free 23 men accused of Islamic extremism. At least 50 people may have been killed in clashes with police and security forces, a protest leader said.
Protesters fell to the ground as the troops surrounded the crowd of some 4,000 and started shooting outside the city's administration building, which had been seized by the demonstrators. An Associated Press reporter saw 10 people who apparently had been hit, including at least one dead, and participants in the rally said two more had been killed.
As soldiers continued shooting with what sounded like large-caliber gunfire and automatic weapons, one man sobbed, "Oh, my son! He's dead!''
Uzbekistan is a key U.S. ally in the war on terrorism, providing an air base to support military operations in neighboring Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But the closer ties with Washington have drawn increased international attention to widespread human rights abuses in the former Soviet republic, whose authoritarian government is seen as one of the most repressive in the region.
Andijan is in the volatile, impoverished Fergana Valley, where Islamist sentiment is high, provoking tensions with the secular government that tolerates only officially approved Muslim observances.
President Islam Karimov rushed to Andijan, where the government said it remained in control despite the chaos, although it blocked foreign news reports of the clashes for its domestic audience. Neighboring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, which share the Fergana Valley, sealed their borders.
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the situation in eastern Uzbekistan was stabilizing.
"First of all, this is an internal matter for Uzbekistan,'' Lavrov said. "We've been closely watching information on development of the situation in this country, and recent information shows that it's being stabilized.''
The shootings by the soldiers followed an overnight jailbreak of the 23 Islamic businessmen, whose supporters stormed the prison where they were held. Their supporters, who seized weapons after attacking a military unit, later clashed with police.
There were varying reports about casualties amid the chaos. Protest leader Kabuljon Parpiyev told AP that as many as 50 people may have been killed during the course of the day.
Witnesses and officials put the toll from an earlier clash at nine dead and 34 injured. Two of the dead were children, Sharif Shakirov, a brother of one of the defendants said, adding that 30 soldiers who shot at demonstrators were being held hostage.
Shakirov told AP the jailbreak was triggered by news that security services Thursday had started rounding up people involved in a sit-in outside the courthouse where the trial was taking place.
Uzbeks in recent weeks have shown increasing willingness to challenge their authoritarian leadership in protests, apparently bolstered by the March uprising in Kyrgyzstan that drove out President Askar Akayev and by similar revolts in Ukraine and Georgia.
The 23 businessmen who were on trial are members of Akramia - a group named for their founder, Akram Yuldashev, an Islamic dissident sentenced in 1999 to 17 years in prison for allegedly urging the overthrow of Uzbekistan's secular government in a pamphlet published in the late 1990s. He has proclaimed his innocence.
Akramis are considered the backbone of Andijan's small business community, running a medical clinic and pharmacy, as well as working as furniture craftsmen, and providing employment to thousands in the Fergana Valley.
But authorities claim they are linked to the outlawed radical Islamic party Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a group that seeks to create a worldwide Islamic state and has been forced underground throughout most of formerly Soviet Central Asia and Russia.
Uzbek authorities blame Hizb-ut-Tahrir for inspiring deadly attacks and bombings last year that killed more than 50 people in Uzbekistan. Hizb-ut-Tahrir, however, claims to disavow violence and has denied responsibility.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is linked to al-Qaida and the Taliban, also fought for establishment of an Islamic state in the valley in the late 1990s. Concerns are high that Fergana could be a flashpoint for destabilizing wide swaths of ex-Soviet Central Asia.
The trial has inspired one of the largest public shows of anger over alleged rights abuses by the government. Parpiyev said that the protesters' main demand was the release of Yuldashev.
"The people have risen,'' said Valijon Atakhonjonov, a brother of another one of the defendants.
Thousands of protesters massed on the square outside the administration building, where a podium was erected. Protest organizers, some with Kalashnikov automatic rifles strapped across their chests, took turns addressing the crowd through a microphone.
"We want to be allowed to work and do our business without hindrance,'' Parpiyev, the 42-year-old leader of the protest, told AP.
Many of the men wore square black embroidered skullcaps, while some were in the white skullcaps favored by observant Muslim Uzbeks. The protesters had posted their own guards on the perimeter of the square.
A nearby theater and cinema were burning. Two dead bodies were splayed near the square - one with a stomach wound, another burned. Several military helicopters circled overhead.
One of the 23 defendants, Abduvosid Egomov, was holed up in a local government compound overrun by protesters who broke up pavement stones to reinforce a metal fence surrounding the compound in efforts to stave off security forces. Some were also preparing Molotov cocktails.
"We are not going to overthrow the government. We demand economic freedom,'' a pale and thin Egomov told AP.
"If the army is going to storm, if they're going to shoot, we are ready to die instead of living as we are living now. The Uzbek people have been reduced to living like dirt,'' he said.
Parpiyev said Interior Minister Zakir Almatov had called him in the morning and heard the protesters' demands. Almatov initially agreed to negotiations, but later called back and said the talks were off, Parpiyev said.
"He said, 'We don't care if 200, 300 or 400 people die. We have force and we will chuck you out of there anyway,''' Parpiyev quoted the interior minister as saying.
In a separate incident Friday, a man carrying fake explosives was shot and killed outside the Israeli Embassy in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent. Officials identified him as an unemployed ethnic Russian with a history of mental illness.
Russia's liberal Yabloko party said the unrest was an "alarm bell'' for Karimov and for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Having fully repressed the democratic opposition, the Karimov regime has not left the Uzbek people any other road than the road of radical Islamism, whose leaders the population is listening to ever more closely,'' said Sergei Mitrokhin, deputy head of the party.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghan students chanted "Death to America'' and burned an effigy of President Bush on Tuesday, following a report that copies of the Quran were desecrated at the U.S. detention center for terror suspects Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials and witnesses said.
Hundreds of students marched from a university campus into the eastern city of Jalalabad and blocked the main road toward the capital, Kabul, intelligence chief Sardar Shah said. There were no reports of violence.
Television footage showed students chanting and calling for an apology for the alleged abuse of Islam's holy book. An object which witnesses said was an effigy of Bush could be seen burning.
In a recent edition, Newsweek magazine reported that in order to rattle suspects, U.S. interrogators placed Qurans on toilets and in at least one case "flushed a holy book down the toilet.''
In Washington, the State Department on Tuesday described the reported desecration of copies of the Quran as "reprehensible.''
"Obviously, the destruction of any kind of holy book, whether it's a Bible or a Koran or any other document like that, is something that's reprehensible and not in keeping with U.S. policies and practices,'' State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.
Casey said the allegations are "certainly serious and it would be important to have them be looked into.''
Ezatullah Zawab, editor of Jalalabad's Mina newspaper, said the students demanded the release of all prisoners from Guantanamo, and that "American troops don't stay in Afghanistan forever'' - tricky issues likely to be discussed when Afghan President Hamid Karzai meets Bush in Washington later this month.
The government of neighboring Pakistan - like Afghanistan, a conservative Muslim nation and close ally in Washington's war on terrorism - on Saturday said it was "deeply dismayed'' over the report, which also alleged that inmates at the Guantanamo prison were abused, and called for an inquiry.
Pakistan conveyed its "deep concern'' to the United States over the report, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. American officials replied that an investigation will be launched and anyone found to have desecrated the Quran will be "held accountable,'' the ministry said.
The United States is holding about 520 people at Guantanamo Bay, many of them al-Qaida and Taliban suspects captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in America.
Further to our Urgent Action e-mail of April 22, we have received the following update concerning Iranian Pastor Hamid Pourmand.
Hamid Pourmand has appeared before the shari’ah court in Tehran to face charges of apostasy and proselytising Muslims. Apostasy carries the death penalty in Iran.
According to news agency Compass Direct, Hamid was brought before the court every two or three days between April 13 and April 23 for hearings that lasted between one and two hours. He has refused to recant his faith despite being pressured to do so. The Pastor’s family was permitted to attend the trial, although the court did not inform them of every hearing.
Hamid was afforded legal representation during the trial. Officials have since informed his lawyer that court proceedings are to be moved from Tehran to Bandar-i Bushehr, Hamid’s hometown. . No date has been given for the trial in the new location or for when he will be transferred to a local prison.
Hamid became a Christian prior to the 1979 Iranian revolution, after which time conversion became illegal. Officials have reportedly said that citizens who changed their religion before 1979 would not be liable to prosecution.
Please continue to pray for Hamid, his wife Arlet and their two sons. Pray also for the efforts of the international community, that they would be effective in securing his release.
Background:
Hamid Pourmand, who was a Colonel in the Iranian army, was also a lay leader of the Assemblies of God church in southern Iran. He was arrested, along with 85 other church leaders, at the annual meeting of the AOG church in Iran on September 9 last year. He was the only one not to be released shortly after being arrested.
On February 16 this year, he was brought before a military court and charged with deceiving the Iranian armed forces about his conversion nearly 25 years ago. Non-Muslims are not allowed to become officers in the army. Evidence presented to the court to prove that his superiors were aware of his faith was rejected as false and Hamid was sentenced to three years in prison with the loss of all benefits. He lost his 20-year army pension and home, His wife and children were evicted, and they now have no source of income.
Hamid is currently in a group cell at Evin Maximum Security Prison in Tehran. He is the first Iranian convert to be charged with apostasy since 1993. CSW is working with other NGOs to raise his case with the UK Foreign Office, the UN and the EU.
(Source: Middle East Concern)
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (May 5) - Pakistan has shared with the United States initial results of its interrogation of reputed al-Qaida No. 3 Abu Farraj al-Libbi, who stayed silent for hours after his capture this week before confessing his identity, an intelligence official said Thursday.
''Only two questions are being asked, over and over, and in different shifts: 'Where is bin Laden?' and 'What were your plans?''' said a senior intelligence official with intimate knowledge of the interrogation.
No intelligence or government official would speak about the questioning of al-Libbi on the record.
Al-Libbi was caught Monday after a firefight with security forces near a town in northwestern Pakistan. President Bush hailed the arrest as a victory that removes a key enemy, and jubilant Pakistani officials said the capture will boost the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
The Libyan terror suspect, allegedly a close confidant of bin Laden, was Pakistan's most-wanted man, accused of masterminding two 2003 assassination attempts against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that left 17 others dead.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid confirmed to The Associated Press on Thursday that al-Libbi was still in Pakistan's custody and that he was being questioned. He declined to give details.
An intelligence official familiar with the investigation said that al-Libbi was being questioned by Pakistani counterterrorism experts and security officials. He said U.S. officials were not present at the interrogation, but Pakistan had shared with them its preliminary findings.
He said that al-Libbi initially refused to speak.
''He remained silent for hours, but he had to admit that he is al-Qaida. He had no other option because our people had very solid evidence to prove his identity,'' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Two days after al-Libbi's arrest security forces raided two homes in the northwestern tribal region of Bajor and arrested 11 terror suspects, including three Uzbeks, an Afghan and seven Pakistanis. On Tuesday, police also arrested six Pakistanis, including two women, and seized weapons after a raid in an upscale residential area of the eastern city of Lahore.
Police officials denied reports either of the arrests were linked to information provided by al-Libbi, and said the Lahore operation appeared to be a family dispute.
Al-Libbi, who's thought to use at least five aliases, was behind only Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahri and bin Laden himself in the terror group's hierarchy, U.S. counterterrorism officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Al-Libbi is believed responsible for planning attacks in the United States, the officials said.
Commandos seized al-Libbi along with another foreigner Monday after a firefight outside the hardscrabble town of Mardan, about 30 miles from the northwestern city of Peshawar, Pakistani officials said. The arrests were announced Wednesday. The other suspect was not identified.
Witnesses said armed Pakistani agents - some disguised in burqas, the all-encompassing garment worn by women in conservative Islamic families - ambushed the two men as they rode a motorbike across a dusty graveyard on the outskirts of Mardan amid an exchange of gunfire.
The unidentified suspect was arrested there, but al-Libbi fled to a nearby private guest house, where he tried to hide.
''I am a jihadi! Police are after me!'' witness Bakht Munir quoted al-Libbi as saying before the Libyan was tracked down by the commandos, who smoked him out of the guest house with tear gas and then led him away.
The arrest ended months of failed searching for al-Qaida's top leaders. Bin Laden has evaded a manhunt since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, appearing periodically on videotapes to warn of more violence. He is believed to be hiding along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
U.S. officials said the arrest was the most significant since the March 1, 2003, capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al-Qaida's No. 3 at the time, also in Pakistan. They said it was the result of months of close cooperation between Pakistan and the CIA.
Al-Libbi's name was not on the FBI list of most-wanted terrorist.
However, Vince Cannistraro, the former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, said that did not mean that the rest of the intelligence community didn't want him - badly.
''In intelligence circles, he was certainly considered the No. 3 man,'' he said.
05/05/05 13:08 EDT
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The United Nations sounded an alarm for women's rights in Afghanistan on Thursday after three young Afghan women were found raped, hanged and dumped on a roadside with a warning not to work for foreign relief organizations.
Women's groups rallied in the capital to protest the killings, which came weeks after another woman was murdered for alleged adultery - examples of brutality that appear to have survived the fall of the Taliban.
The bodies of the women were found Sunday in Baghlan province, 120 miles north of Kabul, and officials and doctors said they had been raped and hanged. A note found with the bodies said they were killed for working for international aid groups.
"While there is no confirmation that this was the case or the actual motive of the killing, this could constitute a threat to women working for non-governmental organizations, which (the U.N.) strongly condemns,'' U.N. spokeswoman Ariane Quentier said.
"In a context where violence against women remains too often unprosecuted and unpunished, it is particularly important that the authorities spare no effort to bring swiftly the perpetrator of this crime to justice,'' she said.
Police arrested a woman and two men in the killings.
Afghan officials said one of the slain women, identified only as Mahbooba, had worked for a Bangladeshi relief group. However, the group's managers denied any link to the victims.
Officials said the note, which accused the women of prostitution, was signed by a previously unknown "Youth Movement.''
In the adultery case, authorities said Mohammed Aslam, a resident of a remote village in Badakhshan province killed his daughter Amina after she was caught in the house of a man other than her husband.
Officials say 13 people have been arrested in the case, including at least one mullah who allegedly sanctioned the killing of the 22-year-old woman.
A group of 26 Afghan women's organizations staged a protest in a Kabul park Thursday to protest the killings and urge President Hamid Karzai to make sure authorities end "outdated customs and beliefs'' behind decades of violence against women.
They also urged Islamic scholars to use their influence to prevent any repeat of crimes which "sully the name of Islam and Muslims.''
Nader Nadery, a spokesman for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, said he knew of no comparable case since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001. During the five years of Taliban rule, women were barred from education and jobs and forced to veil themselves from head to toe.
But Nadery said violence against women - from "widespread'' physical abuse to forced marriages - is encouraged by the slow pace of internationally sponsored reforms to the decrepit justice system.
Quentier said the United Nations was "very concerned about the way in certain instances women are being discriminated against or treated in this country.''
Justice Minister Mohammed Sarwar Danish admitted the difficulties, but put some of the blame on police for not reporting such crimes.
"In most of the provinces, these kind of incidents are happening, but nobody hears about it,'' Danish said.
"We're working on the reforms and we already have a good system,'' he said. "But sometimes there is no court, sometimes no good judge or prosecutor. This is what makes the system so difficult.''
ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia (AP) - Russia's Federal Security service said Thursday it foiled planned terror attacks ahead of Victory in Europe celebrations, discovering a truck packed with more than a ton of explosives and a cache of poisons allegedly intended for chemical attacks.
The truck was found near the Chechen capital of Grozny, said Maj. Gen. Ilya Shabalkin, chief spokesman for the federal forces in the North Caucasus region. Its frame and chassis were outfitted with about 2,600 pounds of explosives for an attack allegedly planned by Chechen rebel leaders Shamil Basayev, Doku Umarov and Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev - the successor to slain rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov.
The truck was discovered on a road Thursday morning, Shabalkin said.
Security services have been on watch for major terrorist attacks around Monday's holiday, which this year marks the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory over the Nazis in Europe. It is one of the biggest holidays on the Russian calendar.
Militants have struck twice in the past on the holiday, killing Kremlin-backed Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov and up to 24 others attending a Grozny parade last year, and killing 43 people by bombing a parade in the southern Russian town of Kaspiisk in 2002.
"The truck was fully prepared for a blast, the only thing left to do was to put a suicide-bomber behind the wheel and turn on the electric detonator,'' Shabalkin was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
He said two men who drove the truck were detained and were being interrogated.
The Federal Security Service also said rebel leaders planned to use poisons and toxic substances for attacks in the capitals of the North Caucasus region and several large regional centers elsewhere in Russia.
A cache containing a cyanide-based substance was discovered during combat in an unnamed settlement on the Chechen-Ingush border, said a statement from the Federal Security Service's press service. The components, which are not produced in Russia or elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, were brought in from abroad - possibly an Arab state, the service said.
"Experts have concluded that the application of these strong-acting poisons in minimal doses in crowded places, in vital enterprises and water reservoirs could produce numerous victims,'' the security service said.
It said less than an ounce of the poison could kill about 100 people.
The security service said a militant group operating in the Russian republic of Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya, was involved in the planned chemical attacks. The main organizer was a Jordanian named Abu Majahid, who arrived in Chechnya in 1992 and served as an emissary of al-Qaida, it said.
The attack was to have been carried out by the so-called Amanat (Silence) jamaat, a group of adherents to the extremist Wahhabi branch of Islam, the security service said.
The group is headed by Alash Daudov, a former police official accused of complicity in the 2002 Chechen rebel seizure of a Moscow theater that left 129 hostages dead, attacks on police in Grozny and Nazran in neighboring Ingushetia in summer 2004 and the rebels' seizure of more than 1,200 people in a southern Russia school in September, it said.
The security service alleged that Daudov received the poisons from an Arab state, through Abu Mujahid.
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Thousands of supporters of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest Islamic group, protested across the country Wednesday for political reform. Dozens were arrested.
In Cairo, more than 2,500 demonstrated in front of a large downtown mosque, waving copies of the Quran and chanting, "Reform is a religious necessity, reform is the Prophet's way.'' One of the banners read, "Freedom is a religious duty.''
Vast numbers of police, in riot gear, surrounded the al-Fateh mosque, while protesters remained in the mosque compound during the two-hour demonstration. People watched them from balconies in nearby buildings, and traffic was jammed.
The frequency of anti-government protests by several reform groups has increased since December. The Muslim Brotherhood - probably Egypt's most powerful opposition group - tried to hold a large protest in March in central Cairo but was mostly stymied by a massive police presence. That led to a crackdown against the group.
But police allowed Wednesday's protests in Cairo and several other cities, though they prevented marches in the northern cities of Mansoura and Alexandria.
Some 2,000 Brotherhood members demonstrated in the Nile Delta province of Kafr el-Sheik, and five were injured in scuffles with the police, according to Brotherhood organizers. About 220 protesters were arrested during demonstrations in the Delta provinces of Sharqiya and Daqahliya and in Fayoum, south of Cairo, police said.
The Muslim Brotherhood was established in 1928 and banned since 1954. The government tolerates some of its activities but has frequently imprisoned its leaders. Fifteen Brotherhood members have seats in parliament, elected as independents and forming the largest opposition bloc.
WASHINGTON — Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Robertson — who founded the Christian Coalition — said he would be wary of appointing Muslims to top positions in the U.S. government, including judgeships.
His comments on Islam drew a heated response from Muslim leaders, who criticized them as racist and inaccurate.
Another conservative Christian leader, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, said he was inclined to agree with Robertson's view of Islam.
The comments came Sunday, May 1, 2005, in the midst of an increasingly caustic debate about the federal judiciary .
Robertson, who launched a brief presidential bid in 1988, said that if he were president he would not appoint Muslims to serve in his Cabinet and that he was not in favor of Muslims serving as judges.
"They have said in the Koran there's a war against all the infidels," he said. "Do you want somebody like that sitting as a judge? I wouldn't."
The comments drew immediate fire from Islamic organizations.
"Pat Robertson has taken his far-right-wing rhetoric to absurd levels," said Arsalan Iftikhar, national legal director for the Council on American Islamic Relations. "He is trying to perpetuate this notion that Islam is a monolithic entity inherently at odds with modernity and democracy. That is absolutely false…. American Muslims have long been contributing members of American society. And I guarantee to Mr. Robertson that Muslims will one day become part of the federal bench — whether or not he likes it."
Sheldon echoed Robertson's comments on Islam. "I tend to agree with Pat," he said, calling on Islamic leaders to clarify their views.
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ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — The rebellion erupted last month in the sober, stolid quarters of the Alexandria Judges' Club: 1,200 magistrates publicly demanded judicial independence from an all-powerful president, and threatened to refuse to certify fall elections if they didn't get it.
The rare ultimatum has dealt an embarrassing blow to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, amounting to an institutional revolt even as he is under intense pressure to democratize.
At a time when security forces are battling to quash anti-Mubarak demonstrations across the country, an uprising in one of the cornerstones of the Egyptian regime presents a prospect more chilling than any street demonstration. The judges' demand is a symptom of a new, unpredictable energy that has seized Egyptian politics after decades of stagnation — and of the popular discontent snowballing in the region.
"We guess that this is our chance," said Assam Abdel Gabbar, an Alexandria judge who sits on Egypt's court of appeals, "and we don't believe it will come again anytime soon."
The judges, who are beholden to the executive branch for everything, from their job assignments to the size of their salaries, are demanding that judicial law be reformed to place courts out of reach of the president's authority. They say that in the past they have certified election results but now they want complete oversight over voting this fall.
For the first time in decades, Egyptians have been promised a field of candidates to choose from, in place of past referendums in which Mubarak was the only choice.
The judges acknowledge they are taking advantage of pressure already bearing down on Mubarak's 24-year-old regime. The elections are approaching fast, and U.S. leaders have been unusually critical of Arab dictatorships — including Egypt, a longtime American ally.
"Our main aim from the start was to choose a time when those abroad would hear us," said Hisham Bastawisi, a Cairo judge on the court of appeals. "The West didn't used to listen to us; now they're listening. They used to listen only to governments and to back up dictatorships, but recently they're listening to the people."
President Bush's emphasis on democratization in the Middle East, coupled with elections in Iraq and the popular uprising in Lebanon, have contributed to a sense of unease among the region's dictatorships. The president rapped Egypt in his State of the Union address for failing to reform, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reinforced that criticism by canceling a trip in February.
Soon after, amid enraged demonstrations in the streets of Cairo, Mubarak made an unexpected announcement: He promised a constitutional amendment to allow multi-candidate elections for the first time in his reign.
If he was hoping to captivate his public, he fell short. Among Egyptians, there is deep skepticism that anybody other than Mubarak will be allowed to win. Many scorn the elections as a cosmetic flourish designed to ease pressure without puncturing a fundamentally dictatorial leadership.
But the president's promise had an effect, albeit unintended: His critics were emboldened, anti-Mubarak demonstrations grew noisier, and the reform movement that calls itself Kifaya, or "Enough," redoubled its rhetoric.
"I'm pretty … sure change will come," said Hani Anani, a businessman and member of the Enough movement.
"You cannot ask for a big bundle of reforms and they give you only one thing. How can you vote for a president when you don't even know when he'll leave office?"
Egyptian judges have been appealing to the government with the same set of demands since 1991, when the Cairo Judges' Club proposed amendments to the law governing the judiciary.
At the time, the judges recall, the president inaugurated the meeting and spoke of his great respect for the Egyptian judiciary. But he ignored their request, continuing to rule Egypt with martial law.
The basic obstacle to an independent judiciary in Egypt is simple: The justice minister, who represents the executive branch under Mubarak, oversees the selection of judges, decides their salaries, promotions and transfers and which allegations of judicial misconduct merit inquiries.
On the books, the maximum monthly salary for an Egyptian judge hovers between $43 and $86. As one former judge said despondently, it's not even enough to pay the maid. And so the judges depend upon bonuses doled out by the justice minister. Some judges collect as many as 20 checks a month, with the bonus pay and fringe benefits such as transportation costs.
"What's really scary is that the rewards make some judges issue sentences against defendants so as to flirt with the government, so that they'll be remembered," said Nasser Amin, a lawyer and head of the Arab Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession. "They know what the state wants to see happen in so many of the cases."
Critics say the judicial system is tainted by political motivations, such as in the recent imprisonment of Ayman Nour, a presidential hopeful and longtime lawmaker who has called for constitutional reform, including presidential term limits. The government accused him of forging signatures to register his popular Tomorrow Party; Nour and other critics insist the charges were invented to silence him.
A prominent former judge and outspoken critic of Mubarak, Yehia Rifai, has spent years tracking trends in the judiciary. He says that in recent years the number of judges who are put on trial before an internal inspection board has ballooned from one or two every year to as many as 50. Rifai interprets the rise as a sign of the regime's tightening grasp on the judges.
At 75, he looks as if he's grown old waiting for change. Coughs shake his frame and his fingers tremble. After he retired in 2002, he published a letter in a local newspaper decrying Mubarak's treatment of judges.
"Nobody wants to be an enemy to Mubarak," Rifai said. "It's not easy because Mubarak is ruling Egypt with martial law, and he can put anybody into jail in minutes. I don't say hours. Minutes."
Most of Egypt's 8,000 judges still haven't taken a stand. There are 1,200 here in Alexandria, the nation's second-largest city, an ancient seat of learning on the shores of the Mediterranean. When the Alexandria Judges' Club met last month, about 1,000 of the judges who backed the declaration were from the city — the rest were eager colleagues from other parts who flocked to the coast to show their support for the movement.
The ranks of the dissident judges are expected to swell in mid-May, when 3,500 judges of the Cairo Judges' Club are to meet to decide whether to join the demands of their colleagues in Alexandria.
The judges' declaration called for "the nonnegotiable demand of the full independence of the judicial authority and the absolute necessity for the executive authority not to interfere in the judges' affairs."
They also called for independent oversight of the elections, from the voter lists to the streets outside the polling stations. In past elections, the votes were certified even though names of dead people cropped up on electoral rolls and ballot boxes were switched en route to main polling stations.
"It reduces the credibility of the judges," said Gabbar, the Alexandria judge. "When we're asked about the results and everybody knows they're not correct, it shakes confidence in the judges, and we feel we haven't done our duty."
The regime, clearly worried, has moved quickly to quiet the judges. When word of the judges' plan first began to filter out, the Supreme Judicial Council issued a statement dismissing them as a renegade minority. But once the Alexandria declaration was endorsed by 1,200 judges, the government switched to a more conciliatory tone.
The Justice Ministry called a committee to weigh the judges' demands. At the same time, the ministry quietly sent letters to judges across the country asking them to sign an agreement pledging to monitor the September polls, said judges and lawyers interviewed in recent days.
The Justice Ministry referred a reporter's telephone calls from one functionary to the next, and despite speaking with six different people and leaving multiple messages at the ministry over the course of a week, the Los Angeles Times was unable to secure an interview with the ministry.
The judges believe the next few months will test the Egyptian regime. Mubarak's response to their demands, they say, will measure his willingness to institute change.
"The ball is in Hosni Mubarak's court. We've said our demands, and they're for the public interest of the whole population," said Bastawisi, the Cairo judge. "It's the people who will benefit from having free elections and an independent judiciary."
With promises of open voting and multiple candidates, the president has staked his reputation abroad on the elections. He badly needs the international community to applaud the vote as free and fair.
But Egypt's judges oversee the voting and certify the results. That means they can polish or shred Mubarak's image as a burgeoning democrat — and they are very aware of their power.
"The government always resorts to judges to save its face from accusations of forgery, so we feel right now the government needs the judges," Amin said. "And they've got some demands."
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Two veiled women in their 20s opened fire on a tour bus in a historic district of the Egyptian capital Saturday, then killed themselves, the Interior Ministry said. Two other people were wounded.
Two hours earlier a man suspected in a tourist bazaar bombing three weeks ago - the brother and fiancee of the women who shot up the bus - leapt from an overpass during a police chase and set off a bomb he was carrying.
After a string of brazen terror attacks during the 1990s, Egypt experienced a relative lull in such violence until October, when near simultaneous bomb blasts on two Sinai resorts killed 34 people. Then, on April 7, a suicide bomber targeted foreigners near a crowded Cairo bazaar.
The Saturday blast, near a 5-star hotel frequented by foreigners and behind the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo, killed the suspect, identified as Ehab Yousri Yassin, and wounded seven others, four of them foreigners.
A group calling itself the Abdullah Azzam Brigades claimed responsibility for the twin attacks in a statement posted on a Web forum used by Islamic militants. It said the attacks were in revenge for the deaths of those who carried out bombings last year in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and for the subsequent arrests of thousands of people.
The claim's authenticity could not be verified.
"The crimes you committed against the people of Sinai ... will not pass lightly,'' the statement said, addressing President Hosni Mubarak. "The time for your removal has come.''
The group - whose name refers to a Palestinian militant who worked alongside Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and died there in 1989 - was one of several that claimed responsibility for the Sinai attacks at the resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan that killed 34 people and wounded more than 100.
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - A bomb was thrown from a bridge to the street below not far from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, killing an Arab man and injuring four foreigners, police said. A second explosion hit the capital less than two hours later.
Senior police officials said casualties also may have been caused by the second blast, which happened in a historical part of Cairo that has with many mosques, but they gave no more details.
NEWARK, N.J. (April 27) - A federal jury convicted a former British clothing
merchant Wednesday of attempting to sell shoulder-launched missiles to what he
believed was a terrorist group planning to shoot down airliners.
Jurors reached their verdict on Hemant Lakhani on their second day of deliberations.
Lakhani has been held without bail since his arrest in a hotel room near Newark Liberty International Airport on Aug. 12, 2003.
The sting operation, involving undercover agents from several nations, became the first terrorism prosecution in New Jersey since the Sept. 11 attacks. The government claimed Lakhani had agreed to arrange the sale of 50 more missiles.
Lakhani's attorney, Henry Klingeman, told the jury in closings last week that his client was the victim of entrapment.
"There was no missile plot until the government created it," Klingeman said. "It's a lot like a fireman who lights a fire and then pulls the alarm so he can be the hero."
But in his summation, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Howe argued that Lakhani "pushed the deal and took steps to avoid getting caught."
Lakhani, 69, was convicted of attempting to provide material support to terrorists, money laundering and other charges. He showed no emotion as the verdict was read. Sentencing was scheduled for Aug. 8.
Klingeman did not say whether there would be an appeal.
Outside court, U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie called the verdict "a triumph for the Justice Department in the war against terror." He called Lakhani "a victim of his own greedy, evil, deceitful conduct."
Three others connected to the case had already pleaded guilty to money laundering or related charges but denied connections to terrorist organizations. They are awaiting sentencing.
Lakhani's trial began in January, but had several breaks while he underwent medical treatment.
Jurors saw a covertly made video of the hotel meeting that showed Lakhani laughing and joking with Rehman about using missiles against commercial planes as the two men looked out a window overlooking the airport. In a box was a disabled Russian-made shoulder-fired missile.
RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has detained 40 Pakistani Christians for holding
prayers at a house in the Muslim kingdom, where practicing any religion other
than Islam is illegal, newspapers said on Saturday.
A group of men, women and children were attending the service in the capital Riyadh
when police raided the house, Al Jazirah newspaper said.
It said authorities also found Christian tapes and books.
Another Saudi daily, Al Yaum, said the raid took place on Friday while a Pakistani preacher was delivering a sermon. It was not clear what measures might be taken against the group.
Saudi authorities were not immediately available to comment.
There are around six million foreigners in the conservative kingdom, which has a population of 23 million, including many Christians from Europe, North America, Asia and other Arab states.
In a rare official rebuke of a close ally last year, Washington accused Saudi Arabia of severe violations of religious freedom.
"Freedom of religion is not recognized or protected under the country's laws and basic religious freedoms are denied to all but those who adhere to the state-sanctioned version of Sunni Islam," the State Department said in an annual report.
Following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, which were carried out by mainly Saudis, the Gulf Arab state's religious establishment came under sharp criticism by the West for fostering militancy and intolerance of other religions.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8272382
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (April 22) - Zacarias Moussaoui pleaded guilty Friday to helping al-Qaida carry out the Sept. 11 hijackings and said he understood he could be put to death for his role in the deadliest terror attack in American history.
U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema accepted the plea, making the French citizen the lone person convicted in a U.S. court for the 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Moussaoui, more subdued than in earlier court appearances during which he sometimes ranted at Brinkema, answered her questions politely.
''How do you plead?'' she asked him for each of the six felony counts against him. Each time, Moussaoui answered, ''Guilty.''
AP-NY-04-22-05 16:13 EDT
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Islamic militants attacked a security checkpoint in the holy city of Mecca on Thursday, killing one policeman and sparking clashes, a security official and witnesses said.
The group of militants, apparently trying to enter Mecca, opened fire on the checkpoint, five miles from the mosque surrounding the Kaaba, Islam's holiest site, said the official in Mecca, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In the gunbattle that followed, one policeman was killed, several wounded, and one of the militants was wounded and captured, he said. Some of the militants fled into a nearby building, and security forces poured into the area, he said.
Witnesses said militants and security forces exchanged fire behind the General Traffic Administration building.
The attack came about two hours after polls closed in Mecca, where voters were participating in the third and final round of nationwide municipal elections.
The number of militants involved in the attack was not immediately clear, but the official said it was large and may include fugitives who are on Saudi Arabia's original list of 26 wanted militants. Only three militants, including the current head of al-Qaida's branch in Saudi Arabia, Saleh al-Aoofi, remain at large from that list.
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and most of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers, has waged a crackdown against al-Qaida and other armed militants since 2003, after a string of suicide bombings.
In the first week of April, security forces waged their biggest gunbattle to date with militants, battling a band of them for three days in the northwestern desert town of Rass. Fourteen militants were killed in that fight - including two members of the most wanted list - and six others captured. A day after the battle ended, police killed another figure from the list during a raid in Riyadh.
SAN`A, Yemen (AP) - After years of working to shake its reputation as a hotbed of Islamic militancy, Yemen is now trying to keep the lid on two separate threats, both of which have bubbled up into violence and can do so again.
One threat is al-Qaida and its sympathizers among Islamic extremists who have targeted foreigners in this mountainous nation at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.
A group of al-Qaida suspects is standing trial - raising fears of revenge attacks. Vague security warnings have Western embassies wary, prompting the U.S. and British missions to shut down briefly earlier this month. The government has hinted of a new crackdown targeting underground schools teaching extremism.
At the same time, the government is facing a persistent rebellion by Shiite tribesman - followers of cleric Hussein Badr Eddin al-Hawthi, who was killed in September after months of battles with Yemeni security forces.
This month, troops had to put down a resumption of violence by his followers, thought to be led by his father, Badr Eddin al-Hawthi, in fighting that tribal sources say killed 250 people on both sides. The elder al-Hawthi escaped the crackdown.
The two movements are not linked. Al-Hawthi's followers are angry at the government, saying it has become too closely allied with Washington, and have focused their attacks on security forces. But they oppose Wahhabism - the ultraconservative stream of Sunni Islam sa
