151 Indian fishermen released from Karachi, Hyderabad prisons

KARACHI: The government of Pakistan has released 151 Indian fishermen from Karachi and Hyserabad prisons as a goodwill gesture on the eve of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to India, Geo News reported

Sources said that the 59 Indian prisoners freed from Malir Jail in Karachi and 92 from Nara Jail, Hyderabad have been sent in air-conditioned bus to Lahore, where Pakistan authorities would hand them over to Indian officials at the Wagah border.

The freed Indian fishermen expressed their gratitude to Pakistani authorities for providing them all necessary facilities including good food and healthcare in prisons. The freed prisoners said that they are quite happy over their release and appealed to the Indian government for release of Pakistani fishermen in Indian prisons.

Fishermen from both countries are routinely arrested and their boats seized by maritime security forces in both countries when they trespass territorial waters jurisdictions.
Justice (retired) Nasir Aslam Zahid’s NGO has borne the traveling and other expenses of the freed fishermen’s return home.

OSCE observers held in Ukraine released

 

AP The head of foreign military observers, Col. Axel Schneider, speaks to the media following his release in Slovyansk, eastern Ukraine on Saturday

Pro-Russia insurgents in eastern Ukraine on Saturday released the seven OSCE military observers and five Ukrainian assistants who had been held for more than a week.

The observers were seized on April 25 in Slovyansk, as they travelled with an Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe observer team. The insurgents said they possessed unspecified suspicious material and alleged they were spying for NATO.

An observer from Sweden was also seized as part of the team, but was released earlier.

Shortly before the release, the insurgents’ leader in Slovyansk, Vyacheslav Ponomarev, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying he ordered the release because of increasing insecurity in the city.

Two Ukrainian helicopters were reported shot down outside the city on Friday, killing two crew members and the Ukrainian Defence Ministry said two other soldiers were killed in a clash on the outskirts. Mr. Ponomarev said 10 local people were killed in a confrontation with soldiers on Slovyansk’s outskirts, but there was no independent confirmation.

Despite the release, tensions in Ukraine heightened sharply after at least 42 people died in clashes between government supporters and opponents in the Black Sea port of Odessa on Friday. The clash began with street fighting between the two sides, in which as least three people were reported killed by gunfire, then turned into a grisly conflagration when government opponents took refuge in a building that caught fire after protesters threw firebombs inside.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman on Saturday decried the Odessa deaths as evidence that the interim government in Kiev encourages nationalist extremists.

“Their arms are up to their elbows in blood,” Russian news agencies quoted Dmitry Peskov as saying.

Govt didn’t share list of released detainees: Prof Ibrahim

PESHAWAR: The Taliban side intermediary, Professor Ibrahim Sunday observed that chances of success of the government-Taliban dialogue process were facing many odds and termed trust-deficit as the biggest hurdle.

In an interview to a foreign media, Prof Ibrahim claimed that the government had not shared with them list of the released Taliban-linked detainees.

He underscored need for sharing of details of the released detainees so that ‘we can press the Taliban to free Prof Ajmal, Ali Haider Gilani and Shahbaz Taseer’ who continue to remain hostage in their custody.

Prof Ibrahim said: “We had believed that the government and military were on same page over the peace dialogue but the army has now expressed reservations in this regard”.

He said the talks’ process also suffered a stalemate due to the infighting among the Taliban factions.

'Divergent' film finale to be released in 2 parts

LOS ANGELES: Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. says the final book of its "Divergent" trilogy will be made into two parts, following the lucrative formula it has used for "Twilight" and is repeating for "The Hunger Games.

"The first film in the series based on Veronica Roth´s novels has grossed $117 million in its first three weeks of release.

Part I of the finale, called "Allegiant," will be released on March 18, 2016, followed by Part II on March 24, 2017."Insurgent," the second film in the series, begins production next month. It is set for release on March 20 next year.

Why was I not released from jail for my father’s funeral?

 

ISLAMABAD: “Why is Musharraf being allowed to go abroad on the pretext that his mother is ailing? Why was I not allowed to perform the last rites of my father when I was in jail. Why do they have a different law for commoners like me and the powerful like Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf?” These three questions were addressed to me by Rana Faqir Hussain, 59, who spent eight long years behind bars for allegedly playing some role in the multiple suicide attacks on December 25, 2003 on former president and army chief Pervez Musharraf.
Rana Faqir was cleared by the courts and subsequently released in September 2013. Rana Faqir lost his father, M Yousaf, mother-in-law, Hameeda Bibi and a couple of his uncles when he was detained by the law enforcement agencies. Despite requests and applications, he was not allowed to take part in their funeral prayers. Rather, he and each member of his family were tortured brutally to accept their role in the multiple suicide attacks on Musharraf back in December 2003.

We were sitting in his drawing room where his wife, Anwaar Fitrat, and his daughter-in-law, Shazia Mubasher, were also present. Each one of them was arrested by the intelligence agencies and then by the police and later were cleared by the courts, after a long and tiresome judicial process. Faqir’s son, Rana Naveed, was also cleared by the courts in the same case. However, he is still behind bars as he was declared guilty by a military court for his role in instigating the army men under section 31(D) of the Military Act.

I was treated to Samosas, Gulab Jamuns and Jalaibis along with a cup of tea. I had met this family a couple of years back. This time, they contacted me as they were upset to hear the rumours that the former military dictator was being allowed to go abroad. Their rented house, in a poor locality of Islamabad bordering Rawalpindi, was a reflection of their poverty.

White-bearded Rana Faqir who also served in the army (1972 to 1976) recalled that he was working as a driver with a retired Major, Rao Suleman, when he first heard that the then president and army chief Pervez Musharraf was attacked again by the militants in Rawalpindi on December 25, 2003. Musharraf had also been attacked only 14 days ago the same year. He said that things had been normal. However, after a couple of days on December 31, 2003, he went to his job where his boss participated in New Year’s night celebrations. When Rana Faqir came back home the next morning, his wife Anwaar told him that some agencies had picked up Rana Naveed, their son, from his workplace (Zarai Taraqiati Bank) located near Zero Point, Islamabad. Naveed was living separately in a government residence which was allotted to him by the bank.

“Initially, we could not understand why he was picked up,” said Faqir. However, we thought that they could be following his son because of his wife Shazia’s brother who was a ‘jihadi’.

He said that he started making calls here and there but could not find a clue about his son. Meanwhile, on the same evening, his wife and their daughter-in-law, Shazia Mubasher, went out to make a telephone call to the latter’s house back in Bahawalpur in southern Punjab on a PCO. That was a time when mobile phones were not that common.

When both the women were coming back to their home, located near Zia Masjid, Rawalpindi, Faqir along with his wife present in the room claimed that some plainclothes people holding guns asked them about the residence of Rana Faqir. The plainclothes men did not know that the ladies were actually related to him. The two ladies feigned ignorance about Rana Faqir. However, they rushed back home hurriedly and told Rana Faqir that the agencies were all set to arrest him.

“The women persuaded me to flee home but I had nothing in my mind and I was confused. Meanwhile, there was a knock at the door,” recalled Faqir. He said that he went to the rooftop and fled the house with only 100 rupees in his pocket. He told me that at that time he had only one thing in his mind that he would come back once everything is settled as he was still unaware why the police and agencies were after him.

After his departure, the intelligence operators arrested five out of eight of his children, including Rana Waseem, Rana Azeem, Abubakar and his two daughters, Saadia and Samia. Rana Naveed, his eldest son, was already in their custody. On the fourth day of January 2004, they also arrested his wife, Anwaar Fitrat, and his daughter-in-law, Shazia (wife of the arrested Rana Naveed) who was with an 11-month-old infant. Shazia was in Bahawalpur by that time. They also arrested some of their relatives who were visiting them and some relatives were arrested from Faisalabad too.

His sons, Waseem and Rana Azeem, remained in the custody of the intelligence agencies and police for two and a half years and Abubakar and two of his daughters, Sadiaa and Samiaa, remained in their custody for one year. Nothing could be proved against them and after complete satisfaction of the law enforcement agencies, they were released one by one.

Rana Faqir, after fleeing the scene, reached Raiwind, where he spent some time. Next year, when the news of the release of his daughters reached him he contacted them through a family friend and brought them to Lahore where he started living with them in Shadbagh from where he was arrested in December 2005. Meanwhile, he came to know that their family was actually being pursued and arrested in connection with the attacks on Pervez Musharraf.

The old man was badly tortured by the police and law enforcement agencies during his arrest. He mentioned in particular the bad treatment meted out to him by two Rawalpindi police officers, SSP Raja Bisharat and SSP Rana Shahid. “Incidentally both are my friends. They not only tortured me but used very dirty language during the investigations,” a depressed Rana Faqir said in front of his wife and daughter-in-law.

Rana Faqir was released on September 18, 2013 from Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi. I was not the first rather the only one to interview him outside the jail for Geo News. In his drawing room, he shared that he had lost everything as two of his sons had become heroin addicts. His small car was confiscated by the Civil Lines Police, Rawalpindi, and had not been returned yet. Precious jewellery was also missing and he had no clue about it yet. He said that though he and his family were cleared by the courts, they were still facing psychological as well as social problems and wherever they went for jobs so they could live a normal life, the people thought that they were terrorists.

Rana Faqir said that one of his daughters got divorced because of this incident and they were unable to marry the youngest of their daughters because they were tagged as “terrorists.”

The poor man was upset when an Anti-Terrorist Court arranged the hearing for the former dictator at his farmhouse. He wrote him a two-page letter telling the general how badly he was treated by his agencies when he was in power. The old man is still waiting for an answer from the former president who had recently shifted back to his farmhouse after his almost three-month stay at the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology (AFIC). “We should end the duplicity of the law and double standards in our country,” he said.

Faqir said that being poor and a common citizen, he felt insulted and degraded when he faced such problems merely because he was “alleged” of being involved in terrorism.

When he thanked the present military leadership that it was not supporting Musharraf’s exit from the country and was not taking part in this dirty game, I could not resist a smile. Our meeting lasted almost three hours. While writing his story, I still don’t have answers to any of his questions addressed to me.

Maxwell released report to expose Nehru’s mistakes that forced war on China

Veteran Australian journalist Neville Maxwell has said he chose to make public the classified 1962 Sino-Indian war report to “rid Indian opinion of the delusion” that the war had been the result of “an unprovoked Chinese aggression” and to expose mistakes made by Jawaharlal Nehru that “forced the war on China.”

In his first comments following his decision to make public last month the still classified Henderson Brooks war report, the release of which was first reported by The Hindu and subsequently triggered wide debate on the legacy of the war, Mr. Maxwell told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post that by doing so he had “deprive[d] the Government of India the excuse they’ve used to keep it secret, the false claim that it was to preserve national security”.

He said: “I hope to achieve what I have been trying to do for nearly 50 years! To rid Indian opinion of the induced delusion that in 1962 India was the victim of an unprovoked surprise Chinese aggression, to make people in India see that the truth was that it was mistakes by the Indian government, specifically Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, that forced the war on China.”

Mr. Maxwell said in the interview he had been trying “for years” to make the report public, including by making it available to several newspapers in India in 2012. The newspapers chose not to publish. His website has, however, been inaccessible in India after The Hindu reported that the war report had been made public. He said the website “collapsed under its own weight” and “not because of government censorship” as some Indian media reports suggested.

Mr. Maxwell repeated his long-held view that “all that talk about China’s ‘unprovoked aggression’ is utterly false, the truth is that India was the aggressor in 1962” — views he expressed in his 1970 book India’s China War.

Mr. Maxwell’s conclusions that China was all the while focussed on peaceful settlement and that India was to blame entirely for the war have, however, been questioned by other scholars, including John W. Garver.

Even in China, many scholars today see many factors, beyond Nehru’s mistaken “forward policy,” at play in China’s decision to launch an attack, from domestic turbulence in the wake of the 1958 Great Leap Forward famine to unrest in Tibet.

Brittany Murphy’s final film to be released

The movie is slated to open in more theatres across the US shortly after the premiere.

Actress Brittany Murphy’s last film ‘Something Wicked’ will finally hit theatres four years after her death.
Murphy, 32, passed away on December 20, 2009. Her final project, which was initially supposed to release in 2011, will debut on April 4 this year at the Regal Theatre in Eugene, Oregon, the city where the movie was filmed, reported New York Daily News.
The movie is slated to open in more theatres across the US shortly after the premiere. In 2011, the film’s producer and screenwriter Joe Colleran had praised Murphy’s final role in an interview.
“Brittany pulled off one of the spookiest scenes in the movie. There’s an important scene where her character is unravelling and she spent a long time getting ready and focused and went for it. Personally, I think it’s one of the best scenes of her career,” he had said.

Report on death of judge Rafaqat Awan released

ISLAMABAD: Additional Sessions Judge Rafaqat Ahmad Khan Awan (Shaheed) received bullets from the official revolver No.522228D issued on 23.01.2014 to his gunman Constable Babar Hussain, C/4311, Security Division, Islamabad, said a police report on Saturday.
The investigation of tragic incident of F-8 Kutchehri (district courts) is underway, under different teams of police and the Joint Investigation Team (JIT).
According to initial evidence, Rafaqat Awan was martyred inside chamber behind his courtroom, where his blood was found on the floor, with no signs of dripping blood anywhere else.
There is no evidence of any distant gunshot of Kalashnikov 7.62 mm (used by terrorists) in the courtroom, on the door of the chamber or any place/wall inside the chamber, the report said.
It further said there was evidence of contact shot (with gun-powder blackening) on the door of the chamber, which suggested a small entry and not a 7.62 mm bullet (Kalashnikov).
"There is also evidence of another shot of revolver on the wooden wall of the chamber fired from inside; slug has been recovered from the scene.
"There is corresponding evidence of two shots on the clothes of the Shaheed (martyred) ASJ. The entry hole on the vest clearly shows blackening, which proves a near-contact shot from a small arm and not a 7.62 mm bullet (Kalashnikov)," the report added.
The post mortem report also showed two entry wounds on the body of the Shaheed ASJ, one on the left forearm, 2x1 cm, (it caused two injuries) and another on the left side of chest (that proved fatal). This fatal fire-arm on chest with "blackening & charring marks" was a near-contact shot. The post-mortem was conducted by a board of three medico-legal experts.
"This medico-legal evidence (entry-wound size coupled with "blackening & charring marks") also suggests that gun-shots were a near-contact shot from a small arm and not a 7.62 mm bullet (Kalashnikov)," the report added.
The corroborative evidence mentioned above clearly showed that there was proof of only four gun-shots fired inside the chamber. Three empty shells and a slug (lead) had been recovered, and the official revolver from which they were fired, matched. The same were taken into custody and dispatched for FSL examination from NFSA.
The gunman Babar Hussain, C/4311, who was deputed on the written request of ASJ-VI, Rafaqat Ahmad Khan Awan (Shaheed), vide memo No.4, dated 15/01/2014, has been formally arrested due to the above irrefutable evidence and his three-day physical remand obtained from the Anti- Terrorism Court, the report said.

Rangers personnel released on bail in Nagan Cohwrangi case

KARACHI: Rangers personnel on Tuesday recorded his statement before the judicial magistrate in the Nagan Chowrange case relating to the killing of a young man by firing, Geo News reported.

During the hearing of the case relating to the death of a young man by the firing of Rangers personnel, New Karachi police presented the accused before judicial magistrate, who granted him bail.

Sources said the Ranger personnel in his recorded statement stated that after having seen one man dragging a woman and push her in a black coloured car, he warned the man, who refused to listen and later aiming at his leg he opened fire, which missed the target hit him elsewhere.