FBI chief warns US against terrorist recruits

FBI Director Robert Mueller has warned the US government against the dangers posed by outside attempts to recruit and radicalize young American Muslims, but wouldn’t discuss an ongoing investigation into reports that a young Somali man from Seattle was involved in a suicide bombing that killed 20 in Mogadishu last month.
Mueller said he didn’t talk about particular investigations. His more general comments reflected testimony he has provided to Congress on the issue, in which he has said these recruits who travel for terrorist training to Somalia or Pakistan pose a special threat here because they may have access to US passports and are familiar with Western society. Mueller said communities being targeted by the radicals are every bit as patriotic as any other community in the United States, and urged members to cooperate. They are a substantial part of the solution to this, he said.
In May, Mueller told members of the House Judiciary Committee that the bureau was aware of young men from communities in the United States, radicalized and recruited here to travel to countries such as Afghanistan or Iraq, Yemen, or Somalia for terrorist training and to fight, often for groups affiliated with al-Qaida. He delivered the same message before the Senate Judiciary Committee two weeks ago, after a long summer that saw several major terrorism cases emerge, including the bureau’s attempts to confirm that a young Somali man from Seattle was one of a team of suicide bombers in Mogadishu in early September. The director’s comments about the bureau’s efforts to penetrate and cooperate with Muslim communities were less enthusiastic than those he offered Thursday in Seattle. The Somali community, in particular, has proved more insular than some, he told senators. As many as 20 Minnesota Somali men are believed to have been recruited by al-Shabaab, a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaida, and at least three have died. Last fall, 27-year-old Shirwa Ahmed from Minneapolis blew up himself and 29 others in a suicide bombing at a United Nations checkpoint in Mogadishu. In July, a 25-year-old graduate of Seattle’s Roosevelt High School, Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, pleaded guilty in Minnesota to providing support to terrorists in connection with US recruitment efforts by al-Shabaab.

Attabad affectees continue sit-in at spillway

HUNZA: Hundreds of Altat camp IDPs continued sit-in at spillway for the second day today to protest inadequate supply of aid package from the government.

The 400 out of 1200 IDPs belonged to Attabad and Sarat areas staged long march towards Attabad on Wednesday while refusing the government’s relief package. The participants of long march reached near Attalabad lake after passing through Altat, Mominabad, Karimabad and Ganesh Bridge.

Despite official assurances, no high level official has reached to start negotiations with the protestors. The protestors announced that they will continue their march and will going to reside in Sarat and Attabad, the areas which are in extreme danger.

On the other hand, ferry service continued for transportation of tehsil Gojal affectees.

Nawaz urges govt to accept courts’ rulings

LAHORE: Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) chief Mian Nawaz Sharif said it was a public support that contributed to the restoration of the judiciary, Geo News reported Thursday.

Talking to media before leaving for London along with Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, he said the government measures are posing hazards to democracy, urging the government to accept the verdicts of the higher judiciary.

The government should not try to behave as court, he stressed.

Reacting to the present stand-off between judiciary and the government, Nawaz said the institutions are being ridiculed and the entire country is witnessing it.

Deploring the letter written by the official of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to judiciary as highly condemnable, Nawaz said the effort is afoot at present to make the courts controversial, adding his party cannot attest to this maligning drive, which is aimed to keep under wraps government failures.

On this occasion, the PML-N chief said he wont play a silent spectator on grave misconduct of the government, adding, ‘We should support the courts.’

Voicing his mistrust and disapproval of the Nab, as being the contrivance of a specific mindset and a tool created by former General (rtd) Pervez Musharraf for translating his nefarious designs, he said the Bureau has been established to persecute and torment innocent people like Javed Hashmi.

Rs50 billion involves the scam of Bank of Punjab (BoP), which amounts to half of the Kerry-Lugar Bill, Sharif informed adding this is such a huge amount that the PML-N cannot let the issue go unattended.

He continued, ‘The government should show out the suicide bombers present among government ranks, who would ultimately ruin the government to the core.’

Speaking on the occasion while responding a question, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif said the Punjab government never commented on any sabotage activity in any part of the country; instead, ‘we prayed to Almighty Allah with our raised hands to accord the country a life in peace.’

‘We had a disastrous bombing at Marriott Hotel in Islamabad; but, we did not react by saying the federal government failed on tackling the terror issue.’

Nawaz added that Punjab government always responded positively on such occasions when terror befell any part of the country.

Court scolds NAB in BoP scam hearing

ISLAMABAD(Rashid Habib): Supreme Court Wednesday scolded National Accountability Bureau (NAB) over its failure in arrest Shaikh Nisar, an accused of Bank of Punjab scam.

Read the original here: 
Court scolds NAB in BoP scam hearing

NAB writes to Attorney of Geneva for Swiss cases

ISLAMABAD: Chairman of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Naveed Ahsan said the Bureau has set in motion the action for re-opening the Swiss cases and letters in this connection have been written to Swiss officials and Attorney of Geneva, Geo News reported Wednesday.

Also, 158 cases have been restored after the SC’s ruling on the NRO.

It should be mentioned that the apex court gave Naveed Ahsan 24 hours to implement a ruling against corruption allegedly perpetrated by numerous officials.

Last December, the supreme court ordered that hundreds of old cases be reopened after scrapping a controversial 2007 amnesty, which had protected Zardari and other politicians from possible court proceedings.

The court demanded the return of millions of dollars plundered by leaders and bureaucrats, as well as action against former attorney general Malik Qayyum and an increase in the number of anti-graft courts to speedily resolve cases.

Naveed told SC’s larger bench comprising seven members that the Law Secretary has been contacted for opinion on cases against Malik Qayyum and the measures for the SC’s orders on NRO are afoot.

Ahsan said in his statement that 158 references have been restored in the country and punishments to criminals have been restored in 10 cases.

Ahsan said the inquiry will be initiated on April 18 against those prosecutor at the Accountability courts, who caused the release of the accused.

In response to the query asked by Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday regarding cases in Spain, the NAB chief said Pakistan did not send any request for these cases.

Later on, the apex court adjourned the hearing till tomorrow, telling the NAB’s chief he needs not come to the court tomorrow; however, court may call him if needed.

US to ship unarmed drones to Pakistan: Pentagon

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon hopes “within a year” to deliver around a dozen unarmed drone aircraft to Pakistan to aid its fight against Islamic extremism, a US senior military official said Monday.

“I would like to think that we would get them there within a year, but quantity and so forth, I think, will depend on what are the right ones, and how many make sense for the fight that they”re in,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official told reporters that while the United States is looking at sending about a dozen aircraft to Islamabad, the actual number of drone aircraft “could be more or less, depending on the need.”

“What we are trying to do is get with them to be able to articulate the requirements of what they need,” the official said.

Efforts are underway by US officials to “match the right equipment to the requirements. That”s what we are trying to work them through.”

Pakistan previously has also urged Washington to outfit its military with armed aerial vehicles like the Predator and Reaper.

US drone missile strikes against Al-Qaeda and Taliban figures in Pakistan have fueled anti-American sentiment because of civilian casualties, and drawn public condemnation from the government in Islamabad.

The United States has carried out nearly 100 attacks with unmanned drones in Pakistan since August 2008, killing more than 830 people. Figures range widely on how many civilians have been killed.

The unnamed official said Washington could supply around a dozen smaller, unarmed Shadow drones to Islamabad, to help with their surveillance and reconnaissance activities.

“We looked at Shadows, we looked at ScanEagles,” among other drones, the official said. “Shadow drones may in fact be the right platform at the end of the day.”

Shadow drones — smaller than the armed Predator and Reaper aircraft — are about 11 feet (three meters) long and have a wing-span of 14-feet (4.3 meters) with sensors and cameras feeding video images back to operators on the ground.

Pakistan”s military already has some drones of its own production which it uses for surveillance, but which are less sophisticated than those manufactured by the United States.

Last week, Pakistan”s foreign minister said the United States would improve its public standing if it let Islamabad spearhead armed drone attacks.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, in Washington for high-level talks, acknowledged in a CNN interview that drone attacks by US forces against Islamic extremists on Pakistani soil have “taken out some valuable targets.”

But he said: “The issue of sovereignty is there. People of Pakistan feel strongly about it.

“We want the ownership. We make the decision when to operate,” he said. “It will help improve the feelings in Pakistan,” he said.

NAB continues to defy SC, bars prosecutor on Swiss cases

ISLAMABAD: In yet another show of persistent defiance to the Supreme Court’s repeated orders to get the Swiss cases reopened, NAB has barred the most efficient of its prosecutors from appearing before the apex court in the relevant case to be heard on Tuesday.

The deputy prosecutor general NAB, Raja Aamir Abbas, who was appreciated and praised by the Supreme Court for being the only efficient prosecutor in the Bureau, has been formally asked by NAB bosses not to appear before the Supreme Court in the case involving the Swiss accounts of President Zardari.

Raja Aamir Abbas is the same NAB prosecutor, who had dared to write to the Law Ministry to remove Chairman NAB Navid Ahsan and Prosecutor General Danishwar Malik besides seeking implementation of the apex court judgment on the NRO in letter and spirit.

He had also asked for permission to write to the Swiss authorities to get the corruption cases, including those against President Asif Ali Zardari, reopened. In a hearing last month, a three-member bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, had expressed its complete displeasure over the NAB’s prosecution but said that DPG Raja Aamir Abbas was the only exception.

In another case of the Bank of Punjab, the Supreme Court during the hearing of the case had observed that Raja Aamir Abbas should take full charge of the cases. NAB, however, responded negatively and has formally disassociated Raja Aamir from the case in which the Supreme Court had issued repeated directions for the implementation of the NRO judgment.

A three-member bench of the Supreme Court, headed by the chief justice of Pakistan, had given 48 hours to NAB to implement the unimplemented parts of the NRO decision, including writing to the Swiss and other foreign authorities.

NAB, which now is directly under the Law Ministry, did not move as directed by the Supreme Court. On March 12, another three-member bench of the Supreme Court, which was headed by Justice Javed Iqbal, again expressed the court’s displeasure over the non-implementation of the NRO judgment and gave another two weeks to write to the Swiss authorities.

But now NAB would be going before the Supreme Court without moving an inch from what was the situation on March 12 as far as the reopening of foreign corruption cases are concerned. Now NAB would be represented by one Abid Zubairi, who has been lately hired by the Bureau, to represent NAB in the case of the NRO implementation.

Interestingly, the order for the detachment of Raja Aamir Abbas has been issued by Prosecutor General NAB Danishwar Malik with the approval of incumbent acting Chairman NAB Irfan Nadeen. Danishwar Malik is the official, who along with the Chairman NAB Navid Ahsan and the then additional prosecutor general Baseer Qureshi, was to be removed by the government following the Supreme Court’s order issued on December 16, 2009.

NAB spokesman Ghazni Khan when approached said there was no mala fide in the replacement of Raja Aamir Abbas and claimed that it was done because of the workload. Although the NAB spokesman did not offer any comment on the question of delay in the reopening of foreign cases, a NAB source said the Bureau would not do anything that does not suit the government.

He cited the cases of acquittal of powerful NRO beneficiaries and friendly prosecution to press that NAB cannot deliver as per the directions of the courts unless it is made independent of the government’s control.

Valentine s Week

TrendPK.com FBI wants to our browsers another: Fair or beans?
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller wants ISPs to track down the “origin and destination of information” about customers browsing habits and stored on the authorities to use for two years. What do you think, should be Internet service providers silence? … [...]

Super Bowl 2010 Teams

Super Bowl 2010 Teams, There are plenty of opinions on which teams in Super Bowl XLIV would be better for South Florida’s economy and those differ from which would be better television matchups.

As unseemly as it sounds, lots of hotel and tourism officials have been happy to talk about the New York Jets being the best team for local businesses because of the influx of well-heeled fans, who will be happy to plunk down lots of cash if their team makes it. There are concerns the Indianapolis Colts aren’t good for business because they were just here in the game in 2007.

Some just want the Minnesota Vikings in because of superstar quarterback Brett Favre.

“I think the best thing that could happen would be Brett Favre,” Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau President Nicki Grossman told me.

But it just so happened Grossman was spending the weekend in New York, to make the bureau’s winter tourism pitch in one of its favorite target markets. It’s been chilly in New York, where the bureau has ads on 250 taxicabs and is making the rounds of TV shows to promote South Florida.

“Timing is everything,” Grossman said. “It turned out to be fortuitous on the Super Bowl.”

The bureau is running TV ads during both the AFC and NFC championship games today.

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Super Bowl 2010 Teams was first posted on January 25, 2010 at 5:38 pm.

India Safe to Travel: Israel

TEL AVIV: At a time when the US, the UK, Canada and Australia have told their citizens that India is facing a severe terrorist threat, Tel Aviv, has given its citizens the green signal to visit India.

The Bureau of Counter Terrorism in Israel’s National Security Council, an agency that reports directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has declared India safe for its citizens to tour.

Rough translations using of the  travel advisories on the bureau’s website says: the bureau believes that there is a drastic drop in security threats to India and the warning issued in Oct 2009 stands cancelled.

“Israel was among the nations which suffered high casualties during the Mumbai attacks and had been among the first to react with a travel advisory in October,” said a senior government official.  “In security matters the Israeli’s are acknowledged to be the last word as they take security seriously.
Union Ministry of Tourism  officials are also upbeat hoping that the Israeli stamp of approval may hold sway with non-Israeli tourists too.

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India Safe to Travel: Israel was first posted on January 1, 2010 at 3:37 pm.

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