Pakistan: Court legitimizes abduction and forced marriage/conversion of 14 yo girl

A high court ruling in Pakistan validating the marriage and forced conversion to Islam of a 14-year-old Christian girl has heightened fears that it will encourage others to commit such crimes, sources said.
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The High Court in Sindh Province on February 3 dismissed a petition to have the marriage and forced conversion of a Catholic girl overturned. The court ruled that both were valid since a girl under sharia (Islamic law) can marry after her first menstrual cycle.

Huma Younus was taken from her home in Karachi’s Zia Colony on October 10 while her parents were away. She was forced to marry the man who abducted her, identified as Abdul Jabbar of Dera Ghazi Khan, Punjab Province, her attorney said.

“The hearing on February 3 lasted only five minutes,” the family’s attorney, Tabassum Yousaf, told Morning Star News. “The court, in just a few words citing the sharia, has justified the violation of the girl’s body since she has already had her first period.”

Yousaf added that the family was prohibited from seeing Huma because police said her life would be at risk if she was brought to the courtroom.

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Pakistani Christian Couple Is Tortured and Burned to Death by Angry Mob

LAHORE, Pakistan — An enraged mob tortured a Pakistani Christian couple and incinerated their bodies in a brick kiln in eastern Pakistan on Tuesday after they were accused of burning a Quran, police officials said.

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'Blasphemy' teen flees Pakistan amid persecution of Christians

A Pakistani teen who provoked an international outcry when she was falsely accused of burning Islam’s holy book is finally out of danger and settling into a new life in Canada.

But while Rimsha Masih and her family have been granted asylum and were quietly relocated to southern Ontario, life for much of the Christian community they left behind in Islamabad remains bleak.

Fearing vigilante justice in the wake of her case, many fled their homes in the city’s Mehrabadi district, according to lawyer Joseph Francis from the Centre for Legal Aid, Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS).

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Calls for Attacks on Christians Emanate From Mosque Loudspeakers in Pakistan Villages

LAHORE, Pakistan (Morning Star News) – A Muslim political candidate suspected of murdering a Christian has instigated calls from mosque loudspeakers for attacks on Christians, whom he blames for his May 11 election loss.

Tensions were high in Punjab Province’s Okara district after provincial assembly seat candidate Mehr Abdul Sattar, sought by police in connection with a 2008 murder, on May 13 arranged for mosque calls for violence against Christian villages.

“Burn their homes to the ground … Punish them such that they forget Gojra and Joseph Colony,” blared village mosques in the district, according to Younas Iqbal, chairman of the Anjuman-e-Mazareen Punjab, a peasant movement fighting for land rights.

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Taliban guns down teen girl for advocating education

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A 14-year-old Pakistani student who won international acclaim for speaking out for girls barred from school by the Taliban was critically wounded Tuesday by a gunman who boarded her school bus, asked for her by name, aimed his pistol at her head and fired, officials said.

The Pakistani Taliban asserted responsibility for the attack on ninth-grader Malala Yousafzai, who gained notice in early 2009 when she wrote a diary about Taliban atrocities under a pen name for the BBC’s Urdu service. Yousafzai lives in Mingora, a city in the scenic northwestern Swat valley, where Taliban insurgents imposed harsh Islamic law for two years before being routed by a major military operation in May 2009.

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These people are barbarians. That said what goes on in Pakistan is not our government's business.

Girl accused of blasphemy in Pakistan may have been framed by Muslim cleric

Rimsha Masih, the Christian Pakistani girl accused of blasphemy for burning holy Muslim texts may have been framed by a local Muslim cleric who was among the first to accuse her of the crime, police officials said on Sunday.

Khalid Jadoon was arrested after witnesses from Masih's village, on the outskirts of the country’s capital, complained about his alleged actions.

The cleric appeared briefly in court on Sunday before he was sent to jail for a 14-day judicial remand.

Religious and secular groups worldwide have protested over the detention in August of Rimsha Masih, accused by Muslim neighbors of burning Islamic religious texts.

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I am shocked.

Pakistan schoolboy's self-immolation raises alarm over poverty

ISLAMABAD — As the school term ended across Pakistan last week, proud families flocked to their children’s grade-promotion ceremonies much as they do in the United States. For a 13-year-old named Kamran Khan, the occasion promised special honors: He ranked first in his class in his rural village.

But instead of attending, Kamran set himself on fire with gasoline – ashamed, his family said, that he was too poor to afford a new school uniform as he entered the seventh grade.

Even in a country where 60 percent of the population lives in deep poverty, the boy’s self-immolation raised alarm. Kamran, who died Saturday from his burns, has become a symbol of the hopelessness of families crushed by high unemployment, rising prices for staples such as wheat and skyrocketing fuel costs.

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Pakistan to deport bin Laden's wives, adult daughters

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Three of Osama bin Laden’s wives and two of his adult daughters were convicted by a Pakistani court Monday of illegally entering the country and sentenced to two more weeks of detention, followed by deportation to their home countries.

The five women, who were formally arrested March 3, will receive credit for time they have already served under house arrest in an upscale section of Islamabad. They were among 16 people detained in the U.S. raid on bin Laden’s villa in the garrison town of Abbottabad last May.

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Clinton warns Pakistan: 'You can't keep snakes in your backyard'

ISLAMABAD — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that the United States had held a preliminary meeting with representatives of the Haqqani network, a group of militants Washington has blamed for a series of attacks in Afghanistan.

The revelation came soon after Clinton, in Islamabad with a heavyweight team of U.S. military and intelligence leaders, warned that tough action would have to be taken against Afghan and Pakistani militants if they did not cooperate in efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and pursue peace.

"We think that Pakistan for a variety of reasons has the capacity to encourage, to push, to squeeze ... terrorists, including the Haqqanis and the Afghan Taliban, to be willing to engage in the peace process," she said.

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Clinton issues blunt warning to Pakistan

ISLAMABAD — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Pakistan on Thursday to eradicate terrorist safe havens inside its borders, saying there would be a “very big price” for inaction against militant groups staging attacks in Afghanistan.

Clinton’s tough words for Pakistani leaders came as an unusually large delegation of U.S. officials, led by Clinton, converged on the capital to urge Pakistani officials to take on the Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based Afghan militant group blamed for assassinations of Afghan leaders and a brazen attack last month on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

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Tensions Flare as G.I.’s Take Fire Out of Pakistan

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SHARANA, Afghanistan — American and Afghan soldiers near the border with Pakistan have faced a sharply increased volume of rocket fire from Pakistani territory in the past six months, putting them at greater risk even as worries over the disintegrating relationship between the United States and Pakistan constrain how they can strike back.

Ground-to-ground rockets fired within Pakistan have landed on or near American military outposts in one Afghan border province at least 55 times since May, according to interviews with multiple American officers and data released in the past week. Last year, during the same period, there were two such attacks.

May is also when members of a Navy Seals team killed Osama bin Laden in the house where he lived near a Pakistani military academy, plunging American-Pakistani relations to a new low. Since then, the escalation in cross-border barrages has fueled frustration among officers and anger among soldiers at front-line positions who suspect, but cannot prove, a Pakistani government role.

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Pakistan leans toward talks with Taliban, not battle

ISLAMABAD — Amid growing American frustration with Pakistan’s handling of Islamic militancy, the government here appears less willing than ever to challenge insurgent groups and is more inclined to make peace with them.

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U.S.: Pakistanis supported Afghan attacks

Pakistan-based insurgents planned and conducted some of the major attacks in Afghanistan recently, including the one on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul last week, with the support of Pakistan’s intelligence service, senior U.S. defense officials told Congress on Thursday.

“The Haqqani network ... acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Internal Services Intelligence agency,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said. “With ISI support, Haqqani operatives plan and conducted” a truck bomb attack that wounded more than 70 U.S. and NATO troops on Sept. 11, “as well as the assault on our embassy” two days later.

“We also have credible intelligence that they were behind the June 28th attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul and a host of smaller but effective operations,” he added.

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U.S. sharpens warning to Pakistan

The Obama administration has sharply warned Pakistan that it must cut ties with a leading Taliban group based in the tribal region along the Afghan border and help eliminate its leaders, according to officials from both countries.

In what amounts to an ultimatum, administration officials have indicated that the United States will act unilaterally if Pakistan does not comply.

The message, delivered in high-level meetings and public statements over the past several days, reflects the belief of a growing number of senior administration officials that a years-long strategy of using persuasion and military assistance to influence Pakistani behavior has been ineffective.

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Pakistani Military Official Sold Nuke Secrets To North Korea

The founder of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb program asserts that the government of North Korea bribed top military officials in Islamabad to obtain access to sensitive nuclear technology in the late 1990s.

Abdul Qadeer Khan has made available documents that he says support his claim that he personally transferred more than $3 million in payments by North Korea to senior officers in the Pakistani military, which he says subsequently approved his sharing of technical know-how and equipment with North Korean scientists.

Khan also has released what he says is a copy of a North Korean official’s 1998 letter to him, written in English, that spells out details of the clandestine deal.

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Pakistan arrests C.I.A. informants in bin Laden raid

WASHINGTON — Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials.

Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan. It comes at a time when the Obama administration is seeking Pakistan’s support in brokering an endgame in the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

At a closed briefing last week, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked Michael J. Morell, the deputy C.I.A. director, to rate Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism operations, on a scale of 1 to 10.

“Three,” Mr. Morell replied, according to officials familiar with the exchange.

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Acquittal for 70 Muslim extremists on trial for the Gojra massacre

Lahore (AsiaNews) – Pakistan’s fundamentalists are rejoicing following the acquittal verdict. The country’s Christian minority is “under shock” because, this time as well, the massacre of innocent victims done in the name of the infamous blasphemy law will go unpunished. The justice system also shows its powerlessness vis-à-vis extremists who can carry out heinous crimes with total impunity, whilst the government remains silent. Meanwhile, a Muslim religious leader publicly says that Christians “deserve” to be murdered.

A Pakistani anti-terrorism court acquitted 70 people who, in various roles, were involved in the Gojra massacre of August 2009 (see Fareed Khan, “Eight Christians burned alive in Punjab,” in AsiaNews, 2 August 2009). The anti-Christian violence broke out following blasphemy allegations. During a wedding, a group of Christians supposedly burnt pages of the Qur‘an, a pretext used to strike at the religious minority.

During the attack by hundreds of extremists (brought in by bus and trucks), ten people died, eight burnt alive. Four churches and various homes were also set on fire.

Following the Gojra attack, instead of arresting the culprits, police, twisting the facts, took into custody a number of Christians for attacking the “other group”. The unjustly jailed Christians were eventually released but after several months.

According to the court, the acquittal last Tuesday was due to the absence of Christian witnesses in the courtroom and the lack of evidence against the accused.

Sources close to the Catholic Church in Lahore, on condition of anonymity, said, “Christian witnesses were under constant threats meant to force them to withdraw their accusations”.

Two of the 70 people acquitted were released the day before the sentence. The other 68 had already been released on bail some time ago.

The main complainant, Phanias Masih, had to flee Pakistan last year along with his family, fearing more violence.

Fr Yaqoob Yousaf, vicar at Gojra’s Sacred Heart parish, told AsiaNews that “Masih and a couple of other key witnesses fled before February” when community leaders “reached a compromise to have the case withdrawn”.

Fr Habib Xavier, from the Diocese of Lahore, the verdict is “shocking”, similar to the Shanti Nagar affair in 1998 when a Muslim mob burnt 25,000 houses. At the time, the accused were also released on bail. “Today, we see the people who burn homes and kill the innocent go free. It was supposed to be fair trial,” he said. “Will minorities ever get justice?”

However, to understand the madness and power of the extremists, it is sufficient to listen to the words of Maulana Kashmiri, a Muslim leader in Punjab.

“There are no witnesses because they [the Christians] know that they are wrong. We got justice. Even though none of us did it, Christians still deserve it [death], because they are blasphemers.”

Source.

Pakistan is passing intelligence to the enemy

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Twice in recent weeks, the United States provided Pakistan with the specific locations of insurgent bomb-making factories, only to see the militants learn their cover had been blown and vacate the sites before military action could be taken, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

Overhead surveillance video and other information was given to Pakistani officials in mid-May, officials said, as part of a trust-building effort by the Obama administration after the killing of Osama bin Laden in a U.S. raid early last month. But Pakistani military units that arrived at the sites in the tribal areas of North and South Waziristan on June 4 found them abandoned.U.S. officials say they do not know how the operation was compromised. But they are concerned that either the information was inadvertently leaked inside Pakistan or insurgents were warned directly by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI.

A senior Pakistani military official said Friday that the United States had also shared information about other sites, including weapons-storage facilities, that were similarly found empty. “There is a suspicion that perhaps there was a tip-off,” the official said. “It’s being looked into by our people, and certainly anybody involved will be taken to task.”

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Anti-Christian violence in Faisalabad (Pakistan)

Faisalabad (AsiaNews) – Christian tombs were recently desecrated and a young Christian woman was gang-raped for an entire night. In both cases, police refused to file a First Information Report, allowing the culprits to escape justice. These are examples of the ordinary violence visited upon Pakistan’s Christian minority. Whether it involves Christian-owned land and property or individuals who are targeted because they are defenceless, victims will not find justice with the country’s legal system. Gradually, Pakistan’s ‘Islamisation’ slowly progresses, especially in the densely populated province of Punjab.

The Pakistan Christian Post reports that, in Chak Jhumra (Faisalabad), Muslim landowners destroyed and desecrated a Christian graveyard, using a tractor to plough over a number of tombs. Buried coffins were broken and the bones of the dead were brought to the surface. The local police refused to open an inquiry, whilst the landowners utter threats against local Christians to get them to stop legal proceedings.

The Faisalabad chapter of the National Commission for Justice and Peace of the Pakistani Catholic Church has intervened in the affair. A team sent by the commission visited the desecrated graveyard and collected evidence.

However, a local Muslim has filed a claim, saying he owned the land on which the cemetery is located. The first hearing in the case is scheduled for 13 June 2011.

Fr Joseph Jamil, a Faisalabad priest, strongly condemned the anti-Christian violence. “The Church,” he said, “is closing monitoring the issue.”

“Landowners and extremists are actively involved against the Christian minority in Punjab,” he told AsiaNews. “Most attacks happen in the central part of the province.” The government, he said, should “take charge of the situation and defend the minority.”

As additional evidence of the prevailing atmosphere of violence, a story came to light involving a 29-year-old Christian woman who was abducted by a Muslim co-worker, roughed up, drugged and gang-raped.

Afshan Sabir is a factory worker and a mother of three. She was assaulted over night on 27 March in an unspecified area near Gojra. When she woke up, she sought help in a state of disorientation. She later tried to file a complaint with the local police station. However, instead of helping the woman, police officers helped the rapists cover their tracks.

On this occasion, the National Commission for Justice and Peace also intervened, providing the victim with legal counsel and following the case on her behalf.

Source.

Pakistan and NATO Trade Fire Near Afghan Border

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani ground troops opened fire on two NATO helicopters that crossed into Pakistan’s airspace from Afghanistan early Tuesday morning, the Pakistani Army said in a statement. In the firefight that followed, two Pakistani soldiers were wounded, it said.

The clash provided another irritant to the already sour relationship between the United States and Pakistan in the wake of the May 2 Navy Seal raid that killed Osama bin Laden at a compound deep inside Pakistan, heightening American mistrust of Pakistan and inflaming Pakistani sensitivities over sovereignty.

The exchange of fire on Tuesday took place at Admi Kot Post in the North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan, an area that American officials have long regarded as a haven used by militants to attack coalition forces inside Afghanistan. NATO officials said they were looking into the incident, and could not immediately confirm whether the helicopters had indeed entered Pakistan’s airspace.

Pakistani military officials said the NATO helicopters came about 400 yards into Pakistani territory. The Pakistani Army “lodged a strong protest and demanded a flag meeting,” it said in a statement, referring to a meeting between officials from Pakistan and NATO on the border. Last September, Pakistan shut down the land route through Pakistan that NATO uses to supply its forces in Afghanistan for more than a week after two Pakistani paramilitary soldiers were killed in a similar border clash.

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