Showing posts with label SPY EYES.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SPY EYES.. Show all posts
NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani Islamic hardliner blamed for an attack on India’s parliament that brought the nuclear rivals to the brink of war has resurfaced after years in seclusion, setting off alarm bells in New Delhi.
Twice since the end of December, Indian authorities have issued an airport security alert, warning of an attempt by members of a Pakistan-based militant group called Jaish-e-Mohammad, or Army of Muhammad, to hijack a plane, with smaller airfields most at risk. Indian officials have said the alerts followed reports of increased activity by Maulana Masood Azhar, the leader of the outlawed militant group.
Azhar was named by an Indian court as the prime suspect in a 2001 attack on India’s parliament aimed at taking top political leaders hostage. Fifteen people were killed, most of them security guards as well as the five men who stormed the complex.
Tensions between the old enemies spiralled after the attack and up to a million troops were mobilised on both sides of the volatile border. Pakistan refused to hand over Azhar to India.
The portly and bearded cleric has remained mostly confined to a compound in his home city of Bhawalpur in Pakistan’s Punjab province for years, but three weeks ago, he addressed supporters and said the time had come to resume jihad, or holy war, against India.
“There are 313 fidayeen (fighters who are ready to die) in this gathering and if a call is given the number will go up to 3,000,” he told the rally held in the city of Muzaffarabad by telephone. A Reuters journalist who was present said a telephone was held next to a microphone which broadcast his comments to loudspeakers.
Flags of Jaish, inscribed with the words “jihad”, fluttered in and around the venue of the gathering. Azhar spoke from an undisclosed location.
Indian intelligence analysts have described Azhar’s resurgence as part of a change in tactics in Pakistan as US forces withdraw from Afghanistan this year, and as Islamabad tries to clamp down on Islamic insurgents who oppose the Pakistani government.
The Indians say Pakistan’s military establishment is bringing militants like Azhar out of cold storage, with the promise of helping them fight India, while trying to stamp out the radicals they can’t control.
Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani army general, said: “It is very dangerous that the Pakistani establishment is giving space to him. They are playing with fire and the fire will engulf them.”
A former fighter for Jaish, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Azhar remained in command of the group, operating from his Bhawalpur base.
“His speech via telephone should not be a surprise for people involved in jihad, he has been controlling the organisation very actively,” the man said.
The security alerts in India occurred just days before Azhar spoke. They were not publicised but two officials, one from the domestic Intelligence Bureau and the other from the Central Industrial Security Force, said authorities had increased checks on airport staffers to ensure nobody with forged passes gained access. Security had also been increased in Delhi’s suburban rail system, where commuters go through metal detectors, are patted down and have their bags checked in x-ray machines.
Staff of the Central Industrial Security Force now work 10-hour shifts in the metro system, so there were more guards at any point.
Azhar was arrested in Indian Kashmir in 1994 while travelling on a forged Portuguese passport. India freed him and two other jailed Pakistani militants in 1999 in return for 155 passengers held hostage in an Indian Airlines aircraft that was hijacked to southern Afghanistan.
One of the other freed militants was British-born Omar Sheikh, a close associate of Azhar who was later convicted in the 2002 abduction and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
After his release, Azhar set up the Jaish to fight Indian forces in Kashmir, the Himalayan region claimed by both countries and the trigger for two of their three wars.
“Jaish has an obsession with India that transcends Kashmir. They had so many plans. Any reactivation of Masood Azhar is cause for deep concern,” said AK Doval, a former head of India’s Intelligence Bureau and one of the foremost experts on militant groups in South Asia.
Other officials in India said the rally in Muzaffarabad and Azhar’s address wouldn’t have been possible without state clearance, a charge Pakistan strongly denies.
“He addressed a rally, but steps will be taken to ensure he doesn’t do it again,” said Tasnim Aslam, spokeswoman for Pakistan’s foreign ministry.
“It is not possible we would allow his group to cause terrorism elsewhere when it is banned for causing terrorism in Pakistan.”
She said independent investigations had often shown that attacks in India were blamed on Pakistan but sometimes caused by domestic politics or rogue members of the Indian security services.
“There’s a tendency in India to hyperventilate without finding out all the facts,” she said.
dailytimes.com.pk
Farhan Bokhari, a political commentator from Islamabad, has said in an article written for the UK-based Jane’s Defence Weekly that China is likely to sell up to six Yuan-class diesel-electric submarines to Pakistan before the end of this year. The export version of the Yuan-class submarine is known as the S20.
Bokhari said the deal had been first revealed in 2011 by a Pakistani government minister but without giving details of how many submarines would be sold. Sources from Islamabad have confirmed that the deal is likely to be sealed before the end of 2014.
A senior official told Jane’s Defense Weekly that negotiations on the technical details of the deal are almost done and that the present discussions are mainly about the financing. Bokhari said the contract would enhance China’s rapidly growing role as the main supplier of military hardware to Pakistan and fill an important gap in the capabilities of the Pakistan navy. China’s Global Times said the deal will certainly boost Pakistan’s maritime power in relation to its chief rival India.
Pakistan currently operates five French-built submarines including three Agosta 90B Khalid-class submarines purchased in the 1990s and two ageing Agosta 70 Hashmat-class boats dating from the late 1970s. The country had sought to purchase three German-built Type 214 submarines back in 2009 but this deal was put on hold due to the cost, reported to be in excess of US$2 billion at the time.
China has also agreed to provide two large civil nuclear reactors which will be built in Karachi. A source from the Pakistani government said China’s Eximbank has agreed to extend a US$6.5 billion loan for the reactors.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures” was a common refrain in the post 9/11 world, as security establishments across the globe geared up to supposedly combat unprecedented levels of terrorism. The main reason for deploying such clichés was to provide justification for enacting new laws which were aimed at fighting terrorism but were increasingly seen to be trampling fundamental rights in the process.
In Pakistan, the state has only just woken up to the need of grappling with the threat posed by terrorism, and has recently enacted a series of laws to provide legal cover to the country’s fight against asymmetric terrorism.
The need for such legislation has arisen due to the inability of the criminal justice system in Pakistan to adequately prosecute terror suspects. Since 1990, there have been 800 incidents of terrorism in Punjab alone, of which only 475 have actually been prosecuted. A total of 2,300 suspects were named in those cases and about 2,200 were arrested. Of those arrested, about 1,650 or 75% were acquitted by the courts due to “a lack of evidence” against them. Similarly, the Marriot Hotel bombing in Islamabad – one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in Pakistan’s history – initially had 83 witnesses to the incident; eventually none came forward to give evidence in court.
In order to tackle the twin issues of terrorism and law and order in general, as well as the abysmally low prosecution rate in particular, the state has enforced three significant new laws, namely, the Fair Trial Act; the anti-terrorism law amendments and the yet-to-be-passed Pakistan Protection Ordinance. The new and proposed laws seek to provide more freedom to law enforcement agencies to combat terrorism, yet they simultaneously conflict with the fundamental rights of citizens which are guaranteed under the Constitution. While no binary answers exist to the perennial security-versus-rights argument, all erring on the side of caution should ideally be directed towards ensuring that fundamental rights are safeguarded.
The Fair Trial Act, for example, has been drafted with the general intent of preventing acts of terrorism. This can be further bifurcated into two specific purposes. Firstly, to provide legal cover for evidence collected by investigating agencies through means otherwise considered illegal (such as wiretapping and internet surveillance); and secondly, to effectively employ these surveillance methods to prevent acts of terror. The agencies authorized to use these methods of surveillancecomprise the Inter-Services Intelligence, the Intelligence Bureau, the three military intelligence agencies and the police.
Officers from the aforementioned agencies can now approach the court for the issuance of a warrant authorizing the surveillance of the accused. Section 5 of the Act articulates that a warrant can be sought if the accused is “likely to be associated with or is beginning to get associated with” the commission of an offense. The language used is vague and open ended, allowing for almost any person in most circumstances to fall within its ambit. The judicial warrant, if granted, will be for an initial period of sixty days. However, Section 14 allows for such a warrant to be renewed indefinitely.
While seeking court warrants is in line with international best practices in such matters, there is one major impediment to the court making a fair assessment. In the absence of the person being monitored, the court only has the word of the agency to go on, with no independent means of verifying the details submitted to it.
These examples from the Fair Trial Act are not meant to suggest that the entire legislation be simply rejected; they are just meant to emphasize the fact that the breach of privacy is a colossal undertaking, hence it should be approached with extraordinary care and only under special circumstances.
Similarly, the discussion on surveillance in Pakistan cannot be divorced from its historical and political context, wherein earlier public examples of politically motivated surveillance have unfortunately demonstrated the subjectivity of the Act and the potential for its misuse. One solution may be found by following the United Kingdom’s model where the expenditure, related policies, administration and interception of private communications for national security purposes are monitored by a statutory committee. This is governed by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. The UK act also restricts access to intercepted communications amongstthe various authorized agencies. There is need for a similar regulatory mechanism in Pakistan along with a requirement for the agency requesting surveillance to credibly demonstrate that all other avenues have been exhausted, or are not possible, and that surveillance is the last resort.
Like the Fair Trial Act, amendments made in the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997 through the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Ordinance 2013 also allow for the use of text messages, telephones calls, e-mails and other forms of communications as evidence against suspected terrorists. The new ordinance also allows the armed forces as well as the civil government to order preventive detention of any person involved in terrorist activities for a period of three months. This last provision in particular, prima facie, seems to be in direct conflict with fundamental rights.
The legal definition of “terrorism” in the original Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 and its interpretation has been so broad that a wide variety of criminal offenses can be prosecuted under it. As an example, many first investigation reports (F.I.R) for homicide contain the phrase “aur mulzim aslaha lehratay hoye khauf u haras phayla kar farar ho gaye” (the accused left brandishing weapon/s and creating terror) and on that grounds alone can be taken up by the anti-terrorism courts. This dilutes the intended impact of specialized legislation and courts.
Unfortunately, the new amendments, in many ways, make the same mistake as the original act. They ignore the fact that the non-enforcement of pre-existing legislation regarding the powers granted to investigating officers in the Criminal Procedure Code and Police Rules is a significant part of the problem, which is unlikely to be addressed by making new laws or provisions.
The latest attempt by the State to promulgate laws to counter terrorism is the Protection of Pakistan Ordinance (PPO). The PPO was approved by the President on October 20, 2013 and was presented in the National Assembly on November 7, 2013. The ordinance will only come in force after it is passed by the legislature. The preamble of the PPO describes it as protection against those waging war against the state and prevention of acts threatening the ‘security of Pakistan’.
Yet, like the Fair Trial Act and the Anti-Terrorism Act, the PPO also provides vague definitions for offences considered as threats to the security of Pakistan. The expression ‘security of Pakistan’ has been defined in Article 260 of the Constitution to include ‘the safety, welfare, stability and integrity of Pakistan, but shall not include public safety as such’. The intention of the Constitution here is to apparently make an effective distinction between “security of Pakistan” and general law and order. In the case of Benazir Bhutto v. President of Pakistan PLD (1988 SC 416), the Supreme Court observed regarding this distinction that “security of Pakistan” refers to those aggravated forms of prejudicial activities which endanger the very existence of the State, but do not include ordinary intrusion of peace.
The PPO however makes no such distinction and hence can be used for restraint of political activity. The Secretary General of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), IA Rehman, has expressed similar doubts about the potential of the ordinance to be used as a legal tool to suppress human rights’ movements in the country. The ordinance also gives policing powers to the armed forces and civil armed forces, which is unusual as it takes away investigation in criminal offences from the domain of civilian oversight. The PPO also grants extraordinary andarbitrary magisterial powers to security officers, making them on-the-spot-judges by allowing them to exercise lethal force even when not in immediate physical danger themselves.
The preventive detention clause also allows the government to detain a person for a period of up to 90 days. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, no person may be arrested or detained without due process. Furthermore, the ordinance potentially violates articles 9 and 10 of the constitution of Pakistan by permitting law enforcement officials to open fire on the suspicion of a scheduled offence, as well as allowing officials to arrest someone without a warrant based on “reasonable suspicion” alone.
The PPO attempts to give the impression that it is directed against an “alien enemy”, but anyone who is unable to prove his identity on the spot can be subjected to persecution under it. Moreover, the ordinance also shifts the burden of proof on the accused. For example, an accused facing a charge of being involved in committing a scheduled offence will be presumed to be guilty unless they can prove their innocence. This is clearly against the basic principle of natural justice where one is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.
The governing principle in all three instances is that of giving more power to investigating officers and shifting investigative powers from the domain of the civilian or regular law enforcement agencies to, in most cases, the armed forces and intelligence agencies. Therefore, with efficiency and effectiveness being the prime considerations, the impact on fundamental rights (which may be overridden in certain instances) is inadequately addressed.
Despite the need for stringent laws to combat growing terrorism, the aforementioned legislative actions do not, in any significant manner, change the State and its criminal justice system’s approach towards terrorism. Most of the powers granted under these laws are already exercised by military/civilian forces in varying degrees. Hence, apart from legalizing them (which has some value), these changes achieve little else.
The problem with new legislation, particularly in times of conflict, is that it can be a cop-out. The State feels that it has at least done “something,” and waits for results to pour in as it rests on its laurels. What is more problematic and dangerous is that these new laws have not made the State any safer from terrorist threats; ironically, they have left the citizenry with even fewer rights than it had before.
By taking away or even limiting fundamental rights, the State takes it upon itself to justify such a move, and it should be able to clearly list the objectives that will be achieved by it. Many provisions in these laws, however, fail this test.
The confusion is compounded by the fact that the drafting of these laws has preceded the formulation of a national security policy.
Laws, particularly those enacted in the fight against terrorism, should be geared towards one policy and one narrative, and certainly not the other way around. The problems of capacity building, institutional co-ordination and national narrative will not be solved merely by legal reform, let alone legal reform as feeble as this.
The writer is a high court advocate, partner at Ijaz and Ijaz Co, and a columnist.
Please note that the views in this publication do not reflect those of the Jinnah Institute, its Board of Directors, Board of Advisors or management. Unless noted otherwise, all material is property of the Institute. Copyright © Jinnah Institute 2014)
By Saroop Ijaz
JINNAH INSTITUTE
JINNAH INSTITUTE
KAREEM KHAN, WHO SUED GOVERNMENT OVER DRONE ATTACKS, WAS DUE TO ADDRESS EUROPEAN PARLIAMENTS NEXT WEEK.
An anti-drone campaigner has “disappeared” from Rawalpindi days before he was due to testify before European parliaments, his lawyer said on Monday, accusing Pakistani intelligence agencies of illegal kidnapping.
Kareem Khan, whose brother and teenage son were killed in a drone attack in December 2009, was picked up at his home by security forces in the early hours of Feb. 5 and has not been heard from since, Shahzad Akbar, a lawyer representing him said.
Akbar said 15 to 20 men, some wearing police uniform and others in plainclothes, seized Khan, who was the first Pakistani to sue his government over the drone attacks that resulted in the deaths of his relatives. “We lodged a report with the local police but they denied having picked him up. I checked with the central office of the police and they have no such arrest in their record, it seems to be work of the intelligence agencies,” Akbar said. “The men did not disclose their identities and no reason was given for the detention. Mr. Khan’s wife and young children were present at the time, as was a neighbor,” he added.
A senior police official who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity surrounding the case denied the force had arrested Khan, who is in his fifties and hails from the North Warizistan tribal area. “The Rawalpindi police has not arrested anybody from the tribal area, in fact we had no ‘raid’ on record on that night,” the official said.
Khan had filed a case against the Pakistani government petitioning the court against drone strikes, arguing they constitute murder under domestic law. The next hearing date before the Islamabad High Court is scheduled for Tuesday.
He was also due to travel to Europe this Saturday to speak with German, Dutch and British parliamentarians about his personal experience with drone strikes and the impact they are having on his country.
According to an AFP tally, 2,155 people have been killed in drone attacks since August 2008, with critics charging that the strikes cause many civilian casualties. The U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution in December 2013 calling on states using drone strikes as a counter-terrorism measure to comply with their obligations under international law and the U.N. Charter.
Clare Algar, executive director of the legal charity Reprieve, said: “We are very worried about Mr. Khan’s safety. He is a crucial witness to the dangers of the CIA’s covert drone program, and has simply sought justice for the death of his son and brother through peaceful, legal routes.”
She added: “Reports that he was detained by men in police uniforms are of great concern, and we urge the Government of Pakistan to do everything in its power to secure his immediate release.”
Akbar, the lawyer, gained prominence after disclosing the identity of the then CIA station chief in Islamabad in 2010 in an application filed in a Pakistani court against him for his alleged role in drone strikes. The case sparked loud criticism from Washington who accused Pakistan’s intelligence agencies of leaking the name of the spy chief, who was later called back to Washington.
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