Musharraf always said emergency was not his individual act, says lawyer

ISLAMABAD: Talking to Geo News on Friday, Barrister Farogh Nasim has said that from the beginning Pervez Musharraf’s stand was that the imposition of emergency was not his individual decision. If any of his lawyers had said against it in the Supreme Court, it is not Musharraf’s stand.

He said the Pakistan Army has to decide that imposition of emergency by Pervez Musharraf was his individual act or was driven from “institutional suggestion”.

Ansar Abbasi alleged that Naseem issued this statement to save his client. He said the army could save Musharraf only through martial law which will leave the country in trouble. He said Altaf Hussain of the MQM has already demanded Martial Law through different ways.

He said army is not a group of 500,000 troops but it is an army of 180 million people. He said the army should take into consideration its perception among the masses if the army gets itself involved in Musharraf case.

He said the legal way for Musharraf goes through the court. He said Musharraf’s lawyers have objections to the judiciary and intend to put the army against the judiciary and the parliament which would ultimately lead to Martial Law.

Ferogh Nasim said his statement that the army should save its chief the way lawyers saved the former chief justice meant to highlight the context in which the lawyers launched their movement.

He said the army should eliminate doubts surrounding the debate if the emergency was an individual’s or institution’s decision. He said all matters related to Musharraf should be settled within the ambit of the constitution. He said he did not talk of Martial Law and the army has constitutional and legal remedies to offer Musharraf when the time comes.

He questioned on what basis Abbasi is saying that Musharraf’s lawyers are talking aboutm Martial Law while what all they say is that constitutional and legal methods should be applied to save Musharraf.

He said Musharraf was the army chief when Martial Law was imposed on October 12 1999 but the history should be traced back to 1950s. He said the SC has written in its detailed order that Musharraf’s lawyers have admitted that imposition of emergency was his individual act whereas neither he, nor his client, has ever adopted this stance. He said Musharraf has always stated that he has aced upon the advice given to him on this matter.

US always suspected Pakistan for sheltering Osama

 

ISLAMABAD: In the aftermath of the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden in a covert American raid in Abbottabad, the top most government and intelligence officials of the United States including President Obama and CIA Director Leon Panetta had pointed the finger of suspicion at the Pakistani establishment for sheltering the fugitive al-Qaeda chief.
The Pakistani authorities have strongly refuted The New York Times report which alleged that the ISI had established a special independent desk to handle bin Laden. There are reports in the media saying the US intelligence had recorded the telephonic conversation between General Ashfaq Kayani and Lt Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha after the Abbottabad assault, which actually led Washington to believe that the Pakistani establishment did not know of Osama bin Laden’s presence.

Laura Lucas Magnuson, a spokesperson for the United States National Security Council, has been quoted as saying that the US has no reason to believe that senior Pakistani officials had knowledge about the location of Osama bin Laden.

However, allegations of a support system in Pakistan for bin Laden had been made by senior American officials both before and after he was hunted and killed in a compound in Abbottabad which was located half a mile from the Kakul Military Academy. As far as the allegations of ISI’s involvement in sheltering Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad are concerned, the first such claim was made by none other than Obama, asking the Pakistani authorities to investigate the network that had been sheltering him.

“We think there had to be some sort of support network for Osama bin Laden inside of Pakistan and that’s something that we have to investigate. More importantly, Pakistani government has to investigate”, said Obama in ‘60 Minutes interview’ of CBS news on May 6, 2011.

In addition to this, in an interview with the TIME magazine on May 7, 2011, the CIA Director Leon Panetta had stated that Pakistan was either involved in sheltering Osama or it was incompetent. “Obviously, the American concern has always been how could a compound like the one in Abbottabad, how could Osama bin Laden be in an area where there were military establishments, where we could see the military operating and not have them know. The concern we had is that we had provided intelligence to them with regards to other areas and unfortunately, for one way or another, it got leaked to the individuals we were trying to go after, so as a result of that we were concerned that if we were going to perform a sensitive mission like this, we had to do it on our own”, he added.

President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan had reacted by saying: “It is inconceivable that Osama bin Laden did not have support system in the country that allowed him to remain there for extended period of time. People are referring to this as hiding in plain sight. We are looking at how he was able to hide out there for so long.”

Carl Levin, the chairman US Senate Committee on Armed Services, stated that the Pakistani officials knew the location of bin Laden and had no doubt they also know the location of other senior al-Qaeda operatives.

He said Pakistan’s intelligence and army have got a lot of explaining to do, given that bin Laden was holed up in such a large house with surrounding buildings.

The US government files leaked by WikiLeaks subsequently disclosed on February 27, 2012 that American diplomats were told that the Pakistani security services were tipping off bin Laden every time the American forces approached. WikiLeaks claimed while citing secret documents seized from Abbottabad compound of bin Laden that the al-Qaeda chief was in routine contact with several ISI officials. The claim was made by US intelligence analysis firm Stratfor in emails which were made public by WikiLeaks. Stratfor was shown the information papers collected from Laden’s compound after the May 2, 2011 raid. As per the WikiLeaks claims, up to 12 ISI officials knew of Osama’s high-walled three-storey compound.

Quoting unnamed senior US intelligence officials, the British newspaper The Telegraph had claimed on August 10, 2011 that Osama was protected by elements of Pakistan’s security apparatus in return for millions of dollars of Saudi cash. And his whereabouts were finally revealed when a Pakistani intelligence officer came forward to claim the $25m bounty on his head. The Pakistani officials have always denied that Osama was sheltered or that Islamabad had any knowledge of the secret mission that killed him.

The Telegraph report stated: “The ISI officer came forward to claim the reward and to broker US citizenship for his family”.

In November 2011, Chuck Pfarrer, a former US Navy Seal, in his book “Seal Target Geronimo”, wrote: “The ISI was aware of Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad and the spy agency officials also provided protection and safe houses to his then deputy Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri”. The ISI knew exactly where he was, but did not inform the US. They continued to let bin Laden pace back and forth in his compound,” Pfarrer wrote in his 225-page book which gave a blow by blow account of the Osama killing, claiming that the ISI officials periodically checked on Osama.

The American allegations apart, a high-level judicial commission set up by the Pakistan government to investigate the Abbottabad raid had observed: “Collective negligence by the intelligence agencies was the main reason the al-Qaeda chief remained undetected for so long. However, it could not rule out some degree of plausibly deniable support at some level outside formal structures of the intelligence establishment”.

According to the leaked contents of the 336-page Abbottabad Commission report [which has not yet been made public under the pressure of establishment], “there was evidence of incompetence at every level in Pakistan’s intelligence and security services”. It found that by 2005, Pakistani intelligence was no longer actively pursuing intelligence that could lead to his capture. The report called the handling of the bin Laden situation a “natural disaster” and even asked the national leadership to apologise to the people of Pakistan for their dereliction of duty.

Vladimir Putin annexes Crimea, says it has always been Russia’s

Putin signed an order “to approve the draft treaty between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Crimea on adopting the Republic of Crimea into the Russian Federation”.

With a historic sweep of his pen, President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty on Tuesday to annex Crimea, describing the move as correcting past injustice and a necessary response to what he called Western encroachment upon Russia’s vital interests.
In a 40-minute speech televised live from the Kremlin, Putin said “in people’s hearts and minds, Crimea has always been an integral part of Russia”.
He dismissed Western criticism of Sunday’s Crimean referendum — in which residents of the strategic Black Sea peninsula overwhelmingly backed breaking off from Ukraine and joining Russia — as a manifestation of the West’s double standards.
At the same time, Putin said  Russia did not want to move into other regions of Ukraine: “We don’t want division of Ukraine.” Thousands of Russian troops have been massed along Ukraine’s eastern border for the last few weeks — Russia says that was for military training while the US and Europe view the troops as an intimidation tactic.
In Paris, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said Russia had been suspended from the G8 because of the Crimean annexation. Russia has the G8’s rotating leadership currently, and Putin was scheduled to host President Barack Obama and other leaders of the group in Sochi in June.
“Concerning the G8… we decided to suspend Russia’s participation, and it is envisaged that all the other countries, the seven leading countries, will unite without Russia,” Fabius said on Europe-1 radio.
Britain’s foreign Office said Russia was still part of the G8, even though a suspension was not ruled out. British foreign secretary William Hague said Putin had chosen “the route of isolation, denying the citizens of his own country, and of Crimea, partnership with the international community and full membership of a range of international organisations”, and that it was now highly likely that other G8 countries would want to meet without Russia.
Tokyo and Berlin said they were not aware of a decision to suspend Moscow.
In Kiev, the Ukrainian government said it did not recognise the treaty signed in Moscow. “The signing of the so-called agreement on Crimea joining the Russian Federation and the corresponding address by the Russian president has nothing in common with law or democracy or common sense,” foreign ministry spokesman Evhen Perebynis said on Twitter.
“Putin’s address very clearly demonstrates just how real the threat is that Russia poses to international security and international security,” he said.
Speaking at the Kremlin’s white-and-gold St George Hall on the other hand, Putin cast the post-Yanukovych Ukrainian government as illegitimate, driven by radical “nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes and anti-Semites”.
He said the rights of ethnic Russians in Ukraine had been abused by the new Ukrainian government. He insisted that Crimea’s vote to join Russia was in line with international law and reflected its right for self-determination.

Priyanka always concerned, supportive: Meera Chopra

Meera revealed that she was close to Priyanka but not to her another cousin actress Parineeti.

Actress Meera Chopra has said her actress cousin Priyanka Chopra is always ready to help her in her Bollywood career and she shares “emotional bonding” with her.
Meera revealed that she was close to Priyanka but not to her another cousin actress Parineeti.
Ever since Meera, who has acted in several South films, wanted to work in Bollywood and there were reports of the sibling rivalry as both Priyanka and Parineeti used to snub her.
Parineeti even went on to say that Meera isn’t family but a distant relative.
Meera said Parineeti’s remarks against her are “unwarranted and stupid”.
“We all have been brought up together 20 years ago. We used to stay together. All brothers were close to each other before they split and brought up in different cities. Parineeti is young, Priyanka and I are of same age.. We are close,” Meera said.
“When she (Parineeti) talks like that… I think it is stupid… Why would you talk like that. It doesn’t disturb me as I don’t have any emotional connect with her. I don’t remember the time spent with her,” she said.
But if such statements would have come from Priyanka then it would have definitely bothered Meera as they share a close relationship.
Meera revels Priyanka was angry as to why she did not show her anything about her upcoming film ‘Gangs of Ghost’.