KHI 28-02-2012_Layout 1 2/28/2012 2:46 AM Page 1
No intention to curb electronic media: Firdous
Bloody KU phadda over tearing of BB’s poster
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Russia ‘thwarts plot’ to assassinate Vladimir Putin
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Rs15.00 Vol ii no 242 22 pages Karachi edition
tuesday, 28 February, 2012 Rabi-ul-Sani 5, 1433
KP chief minister escapes bombing at rally, six killed More than 20 injured as bomb fixed to motorcycle explodes just after aNp rally in Nowshera g
PesHAWAr
A
StAff REPORt
T least six people were killed and more than 20 others injured in a high-intensity bomb explosion near the GT Road in Nowshera on Monday. The explosion occurred just as participants of a public gathering arranged by the Awami National Party (ANP) were dispersing. Besides others, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti and several senior ANP leaders had addressed the public meeting. Police officials said around four to five kilogrammes of explosive were fixed to a motorcycle, which detonated when the people started to leave the venue. Authorities have so far confirmed six casualties and injuries to more than 20 people. Except a few policemen, almost all of the victims were ANP workers from Nowshera. The injured were admitted to hospitals in Nowshera and Peshawar, where condition of several of the injured
was said to be critical. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack as yet. Official said Hoti and his cabinet members had left the venue minutes before the explosion. It was the third bomb in five days to hit the northwest, which in recent months had seen a decline in violence linked to a local Taliban insurgency directed against a government allied to the US-led war against terror. “The bomb was planted on a motorbike and the target was the meeting,” local police chief Mohammad Hussain said. “The bomb carried about three to four kilogrammes of explosives, it was detonated using a remote-controlled device,” Hussain told AFP. The bomb was attached near the fuel tank of the motorcycle, parked about 150 metres from the venue of the meeting, he said. On Friday, three suicide bombers blew themselves up at a police station in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing four officers a day after a car bombing killed 13 people at a bus station on the outskirts of Peshawar.
Welcome to Pakistan, Oscar! Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy makes country proud after winning Pakistan’s first Academy Award for documentary on acid attacks HoLLYWooD AgENCiES
Accustomed to being the focus of bad news, the Pakistani nation celebrated on Monday after a filmmaker from Karachi won the country’s first Academy Award, for a documentary about the victims of gruesome acid attacks. The film “Saving Face” by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy follows survivors among hundreds of people attacked every year, and focuses on British Pakistani plastic surgeon Mohammad Jawad, who returned to his homeland to help restore their faces and lives. “Daniel and I want to dedicate this award to all the heroes working on the ground in Pakistan, including Dr Mohammad Jawad who’s here with us today,” said Sharmeen, referring to her co-director Daniel Junge. Jawad was the plastic surgeon “working on rehabilitating all these women” including Rukhsana and Zakia, “our main subjects of the film, whose resilience and bravery in the face of such adversity is admirable”, she added. Sharmeen paid tribute to “all the women in Pakistan who are working for change,” saying: “Don’t give up on your dreams. This is for you.” Twitter followers in Pakistan erupted with joy at news of the Oscar, falling over themselves with praise for her win and delighted that Pakistan was making headlines for something other than al Qaeda, Taliban and bomb attacks. Continued on page 04
HOllyWOOd: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy holding Pakistan’s first Academy Award. afp
ISI, army knew of Osama hideout: Stratfor email Monitoring Desk
NOWSHERA: Elderly men react after their relatives were killed in a bombing just after an Awami National Party public gathering on Monday. afp
PM seeks Awan, Chishti, Sethi as witnesses isLAMABAD MASOOd REHMAN
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on Monday requested the Supreme Court to summon former law minister Babar Awan, former law secretary Masood Chishti and Cabinet Secretary Nargis Sethi as witnesses and record their statement in the contempt proceedings against him for not complying with the
court’s December 16, 2009 order on the National Reconciliation Ordinance. The prime minister filed the application through his lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, under order 33, Rules 4-5 and 540 of the criminal procedure code (CrPC). The applicant pleaded the court to direct the law secretary to produce summaries of May 21 and September 21, 2010 along with the orders passed by him (the PM).
Gilani said his defence rested mainly on these summaries presented to him as the prime minister, adding that these summaries contained the history of the issue, the background, the previous opinions and the proposals. He said the statements of these three, who recorded their views and put their signatures on the summaries, Continued on page 04
Middle to senior-level officials of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Pakistani military knew the arrangements for Osama bin Laden and his Abbottabad safe house, claimed a leaked Stratfor email, the Hindustan Times reported on Monday. Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks on Monday began publishing more than five million confidential emails from the US-based intelligence firm. “Mid- to senior-level ISI and Pakistani military, with one retired general, that had knowledge of the OBL (Osama bin laden) arrangements and safe house,” wrote Fred Burton, Stratfor’s vice president for intelligence, in an email to one of his company’s regional director for South Asia, soon after the killing of the al Qaeda chief on May 2 last year in Abbottabad. Burton, who is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on security, terrorists and terrorist organisations, however, did not reveal his source of such an information, but did say that it was coming from his source in Pakistan. Less than a dozen people within the ISI and the Pakistan military had information on bin Laden, he writes in the leaked email. According to the Indian paper, Burton informed Kamran Bokhari, Stratfor’s regional director for the Middle East and South Asia, that the source, however, did not provide him with
the names of the ISI and Pakistan military officials who had knowledge of this arrangement for Osama. At the same time, he asserted that the American intelligence knew about it. “Names unk (unknown) to me and not provided. Specific ranks unk to me and not provided. But, I get a very clear sense we (US intel) know names and ranks,” Burton wrote in his email dated May 13 using his Blackberry, the paper said. Wikileaks alleged that whereas large numbers of Stratfor’s subscribers and clients work in the US military and intelligence agencies, it gave a complimentary membership to former ISI chief, Gen (r) Hamid Gul, who according to US diplomatic cables, planned an IED attack on international forces in Afghanistan in 2006. Burton said he was not sure, if this information was passed on to the government of Pakistan, quickly adding that if he was in command he would not do so as Pakistan could not be trusted. “I also do not know if we have passed this info to the GOP (Government of Pakistan). If I was in command, I would not pass the info to the GOP, because we can’t trust them. I would piece meal the names off and bury in a list of other non-related names for internal ISI traces in a non-alerting fashion, to see what the Pakis tell us. I may also trade one or two names for the captured tail rudder,” he wrote.