Trayvon Martin Killer Wanted to Shoot, Prosecutor Says
By Andrew Harris & Christopher Boyd
George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, didn’t shoot the teenager in self-defense, a prosecutor told a jury of six women at the start of trial in Florida.
Read more » Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-24/martin-murder-trial-set-to-start-before-florida-jury.html
via – Twitter
Sayedee gave fatwa ‘legalising war booty including women’
The chief prosecutor on Monday told the International Crimes Tribunal that accused Delwar Hossain Sayedee during the liberation war had pronounced ‘fatwa’ (Islamic religious edict) legalising war booty, including goods, chattels and women, captured from the ‘enemies’ terming those ‘mal-e-ganimat (war boaty),’ reports UNB.
Closing the opening statement, chief prosecutor Golam Arif Tipu said accused Sayedee as an armed Razakar commander was a party to it.
People saw Sayedee wearing white panjabi tucked with his lungi like loin cloth carrying on his head and hands the war booty of goods and chattels, the chief prosecutor said, adding that the war booty were dumped in his father-in-law’s house.
About the captured women during the war of Liberation especially of the Hindu community, the chief prosecutor said the women war booty were kept reserved to be sexually enjoyed by the Pakistan occupation forces at Parerhat makeshift camp in Pirojpur.
At one stage, Sayedee had developed illicit relationship with a young girl, Bhanu Saha, daughter of Bipod Saha at Parerhat and regularly went to her house to have sex with her under duress, the chief prosecutor said.
The chief prosecutor further stated that ravished Bhanu left for India from her motherland and never returned to Bangladesh. Later, Bhanu got married there and now leads a family life, he added.
The chief prosecutor also stated that after the emergence of Bangladesh, Sayedee, had gone into hiding for long and reappeared at his locality after one-and-half-decades in 1986. Later, Sayedee started lecturing on religious subjects as ‘fake’ maulana, he said.
Earlier, the chief prosecutor, in a nutshell, gave horrendous descriptions of atrocities perpetrated by the Pakistan Army and its cohorts killing innocent freedom-loving people, including then Pirojpur Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Fayezur Rahman Ahmed, father of writer-brothers Humayun Ahmed and Zafar Iqbal, SDO-in charge Abdur Razzaq and district magistrate Saif Mizanur Rahman. They were captured from their workplaces and later gunned down. Their bodies were thrown into the Baleshwar River.
Sayedee had also helped recruit Razakars, an auxiliary force of the occupation army, and invited the army by establishing makeshift camps in Pirojpur for committing crimes against humanity, the chief prosecutor mentioned.
Nayeb-e-ameer of Jamaat-e-Islami Sayedee (71), was charged with crimes against humanity, including genocide, rape, arson attacks, looting, and forcibly converting Hindus into Muslims during the liberation war in collaboration with the Pakistani occupation forces. The charges fall under section 3 (2) and its sub-sections of the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act 1973.
The recording of evidence of the prosecution witnesses before the tribunal will start on December 7.
Courtesy » The Financial Express
http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/more.php?news_id=156854&date=2011-11-22
Qadri case judge sent abroad
by Zulqernain Tahir
LAHORE: The district and sessions judge, who had handed down two death sentences to Mumtaz Qadri for killing Punjab governor Salman Taseer, has left for Saudi Arabia along with his family after receiving death threats from extremists.
“The death threats have forced Judge Pervez Ali Shah to leave the country along with his family for Saudi Arabia,” Advocate Saiful Malook, the special prosecutor in the Qadri case, told Dawn on Monday.
He said sensing the gravity of the situation the government had arranged the lodging of Mr Shah and members of his family abroad. “Although security was provided to the judge and his family members, the government on the reports of law-enforcement agencies opted for sending him abroad,” he said.
There were also unconfirmed reports that extremist elements in religious parties had fixed the head money for the judge. “There were such reports but there was a potential threat to the life of Mr Shah and his family members,” he said.
Mr Malook said he also had been receiving threats to his life and urged the government to arrange adequate security. “The government has deployed only two policemen for my security which is not adequate,” he said.
Judge Pervez Ali Shah had said in his verdict: “No-one can be given the licence to kill anyone in any condition, therefore, the killer cannot be pardoned as he has committed a heinous crime.”
Assassin Qadri, a constable in the Punjab Police Elite Force, tried to justify the murder by stating that he had killed Mr Taseer for supporting Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman who the slain governor had projected as having been wrongly convicted of blasphemy. Qadri, who was on duty to guard Taseer, gunned him down outside a restaurant in Islamabad on Jan 4 this year. ….
Read more » DAWN.COM
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nkpvbwaKDDE
Courtesy » Aaj News Tv (Bolta Pakistan with Nusrat Javed and Mushtaq Minhas – 25th October 2011)
By Ahmed Chandio
The assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer has spread fear and terror among people. A killer has been made hero and the victim as a villain in the name of blasphemy law. Religious parties of the country have intensified their activities in the wake of the Governor’s assassination. They don’t care about the country’s image abroad and the cost anyway. People are not ready to discuss the issue of blasphemy saying it’s a sensitive issue.
Lawyers of Rawalpindi forced a judge of an anti-terrorism court not to leave for the capital to hear the case. Finally, police shifted the accused to Rawalpindi to present him before the judge. Lawyers and activists of some religious parties placed garlands of roses around the killer’s neck. They showered him with flower petals and kissed him. According to a PPP minister, lawyers who garlanded the killer belonged to the PML-N.
Over 300 lawyers signed legal documents expressing their willingness to defend the killer. But no public prosecutor came forward to plead the case of the assassinated governor because of fear.
One newspaper reported that Qadri was a mercenary killer and paid to carry out the murder. He was given an assurance that his family would be looked after if anything happened to him or if he was convicted. Sources said announcements had been made about bounty to be paid to the killer and the amount offered totaled Rs40 million.
The Punjab governor’s murder is seen as an act of religious fanaticism. The roots of the menace can be traced back to the Zia era. Earlier it was considered that madressahs (religious seminaries) served as breeding grounds for producing fanatics. But profiles of 9/11 terrorists, Times Square bomber, the killer of journalist Daniel Pearl proved that all of them had not studied in madressahs. The killer of Punjab governor had also not studied in madressah.
Can we hold curriculum being taught from primary to university-level education in Pakistan responsible for terrorism? No. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the killer of Daniel Pearl, had studied in the London School of Economics.
Then what instigated them to be a fanatic? What are sources and forces of hate in Pakistan?
There has been no doubt that hate missions are very much institutionalized and billions of rupees are spent on them. Some foreign countries are also funding millions of rupees to groups involved in acts of militancy. …
Read more : Indus Herald
– Politicians, lawyers and journalists who championed the cause of democracy now fail to speak up
A month before the governor of the Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, was lowered into an early grave, an imam at a mosque in Peshawar asked the Taliban to kill a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy, if the Pakistani state did not carry out the death sentence. Nawa-e-Waqt, the second most read Urdu-language newspaper in the country, wholeheartedly approved of the 500,000 rupee bounty that the cleric Maulana Yousuf Qureshi put on Asia Bibi’s head. Its lead editorial went on to threaten anyone, like Taseer, who supported the woman’s cause and campaigned for a repeal of the infamous blasphemy law. “The punishment handed down to Asia Bibi will be carried out in one manner or the other, and who knows whose position and rank will be terminated as a result of the debate on the repeal of the blasphemy laws,” the newspaper wrote. That was on 5 December. A month later Taseer was killed by his bodyguard, a 26-year-old policeman, Mumtaz Qadri. Neither the cleric nor the editors of the newspaper are being charged with incitement.
The celebration of Taseer’s assassination has continued ever since. Making common cause with radical Islamists, lawyers showered petals on Qadri. They surrounded the anti-terrorism court at Rawalpindi and at one point the judge refused to hear the case and police considered dropping a reference to the anti-terror act and trying Qadri in a district court. When the hearing went ahead after five hours, no public prosecutor turned up because of fears for their safety, according the report in Dawn.com. Nationally, Taseer’s death was greeted with cold-hearted intolerance from rightwing religious leaders – several of whom said he got what he deserved – and with spineless capitulation from the ruling Pakistan People’s party, of which the Punjab governor was the fifth most important member. Shortly after he visited Asia Bibi in jail with his wife and daughter, a mob rioted outside the governor’s house. Prominent TV commentators joined in. The law minister, Babar Awan, then caved in, saying there was no question of reforming the law. Now Awan has rushed for cover behind a judicial inquiry, painting the killing as part of some unnamed conspiracy to destabilise the country.
The truth is all too clear. Who is responsible for Taseer’s death? Some of the very politicians, lawyers and journalists who championed the cause of democracy, parliament and the rule of law against military dictators. Now they support, or fail to speak up against, a law which has become the weapon of choice of dictators, mobs and bigots. Where is the justice in a law widely abused to settle personal scores and to discriminate against minorities? No proof is needed. The alleged blasphemer can be locked up and executed on the say-so of witnesses and yet the slander can never be repeated in court, let alone proved, because to do so would compound the crime. Asia Bibi has spent 18 months in one of Pakistan’s most hellish prisons, the last month of it in solitary confinement. At least 10 people have been killed while awaiting trial on blasphemy charges since 1990, according to human rights workers. …
Read more : The Guardian
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