Ground Zero Mosque Iman Rauf Justifies Islamic Terrorism

Via

Who is Feisal Abdul Rauf — the man behind the ‘Ground Zero mosque’?

To support these charges, his detractors cite Rauf’s refusal to call Hamas a terrorist group and his equating of certain U.S. actions with Islamic terrorism. The Cordoba Initiative and its Park51 project aren’t about dialogue, critics say, but rather about proselytizing and spreading Islam.

What are some of his controversial quotes?
“We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non Muslims.” (Speech in Australia, 2005)

“I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened [on 9/11], but United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened… We have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.” (CBS 60 Minutes, Sept. 30, 2001)

“The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets.” (Quoted in Sydney Morning Herald, 2004)

YouTube: Imam Rauf “America Has Muslim Blood on Hands

Imam Rauf’s Newly Discovered Explosive Audio Tapes

Pakistanis pose as Indians after New York bomb scare by Pakistani Islamic terrorist

Pakistanis pose as Indians after NY bomb scare
Walden Siew, NEW YORK
Fri May 7

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Pakistani merchants and job seekers in the United States, still reeling from economic hardship since the September 11 attacks of 2001, are posing as Indians to avoid discrimination in the wake of the Times Square bomb attempt.

Once again, a man of Pakistani descent is at the center of a security story, leading to backlash against the Pakistani-American community.

Faisal Shahzad, 30, a naturalized American born in Pakistan, was arrested on Monday, two days after authorities say he parked a crude car bomb in New York’s busy Times Square.

Suspected September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and convicted 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef are also of Pakistani decent, and anti-American militants fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan take refuge in Pakistan.

In Brooklyn, home to one of the largest Pakistani populations in the United States, business is scant at the various grocery, halal meat and sweet cake shops since a Pakistani-American was suspected in the Times Square plot. More than 100 businesses along Coney Island Avenue have closed due to a 30 percent drop in business since 2001, a merchants’ association said.

In Washington, an American man of Pakistani descent told of coming under suspicion this week when he tried to buy garden fertilizer. The Times Square car bomb contained a non-explosive type of fertilizer.

While there have been no reported incidents since the failed car bomb attack last Saturday, some Pakistanis are bracing for reprisals. Police have increased foot patrols.

“A lot of Pakistanis can’t get jobs after 9/11 and now it’s even worse,” said Asghar Choudhri, an accountant and chairman of Brooklyn’s Pakistani American Merchant Association. “They are now pretending they are Indian so they can get a job.”

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, creating hostilities that ordinarily would lead a Pakistani to resent being mistaken for an Indian.

According to the latest U.S. census data, some 210,410 people of Pakistani origin reside in the United States. Nearly 15,000 Pakistanis received U.S. immigrant visas last year.

“I want to make clear that we will not tolerate any bias or backlash against Pakistani or Muslim New Yorkers,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this week, noting there are always “a few bad apples.”

New York is “the city where you can practice your religion and say what you want to say and be in charge of your own destiny and we’re going to keep it that way,” Bloomberg said.

SUSPICION OF GARDENING

In Washington, an American of Pakistani heritage who would only be identified as Farhan, said a manager of a suburban home-improvement store prevented him from buying two bags of fertilizer for his family’s lawn on Tuesday.

Farhan, who was born in northern Virginia, said police arrived soon after, investigated and allowed him to buy the fertilizer.

“What kind of a country are we living in when a 22-year-old male can’t buy fertilizer?” Farhan asked. “I’m American. I’m not Pakistani.”

Farhan said the store had subsequently apologized and the case appeared to be one of an overzealous manager rather than store policy.

Merchants in New York, many of whom declined to be named, still remember reprisals after September 11. Soon after the attacks, there was a drive-by shooting in Brooklyn at a Pakistani restaurant, which is now closed.

The local merchants association has shrunk to 150 members, from about 250 merchants almost a decade ago.

The FBI also arrested many undocumented workers in the neighborhood, leading to a wave of deportations, and residents would call law enforcement to make claims against their neighbors, including many false claims, Choudhri said.

“After 9/11, we took much pain,” he said. “After that, a small beating is nothing. Now the Pakistanis are not so much scared but we are ashamed. We are embarrassed that the name of Pakistan came up.”

(Additional reporting by William Maclean in London and Frances Kerry in Washington; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Bill Trott)

The ugly world of Kashmir’s online Muslim rebels

The ugly world of Kashmir’s online rebels

Praveen Swami

Social networking sites backing street clashes overflow with communal invective and calls to violence 

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There is no evidence that social networks are used to organise or fund protests

Little infrastructure to enforce Facebook’s terms of use that prohibit abuse
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NEW DELHI/SRINAGAR: “I know I’m sexy,” Srinagar resident Junaid Rafiqi proclaims on his Facebook page, below a professionally lit photograph that, among other things, shows off his possession of an expensive pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses.

He goes on with an enthusiasm unfettered by punctuation, spelling and grammar: “I got the looks that drives the girls wild I got the moves that really move them. I send chills up and down their spines” [sic., throughout and below].

Facebook users like Rafiqi have been sending chills down the spines of the police in Jammu and Kashmir for much of this summer. Much to the dismay of the authorities, social networks backing the cause of the Islamist-led protesters have proliferated on the Internet.

There is no evidence that social networks have been used to organise or fund the protests — but their content underlines concerns at the growing influence the religious right-wing has over the educated young people in Kashmir.

“We Hate Omar Abdullah,” a network Mr. Rafiqi often participates in, gives some insight into the world of Kashmir’s Facebook rebels. The network hosts a collection of political satire. There is, for example, a digitally-manipulated image of Paul, the celebrity octopus, picking a dead donkey over the Chief Minister in response to a question who has “more guts.”

But much of the satire is venomously communal. Mr. Abdullah is repeatedly referred to as “Omar Singh” — a derisory reference derived, evidently, from the rumour that his wife is Sikh. The former Chief Minister, Farooq Abdullah, is shown offering respects at a Hindu temple, while another image caricatures the Chief Minister and his wife as pilgrims to the Amarnath shrine. The administrators of the “We Hate Omar Abdullah,” quite clearly see politicians’ efforts to reach out to multiple religious communities as a betrayal.

“The Dalla [broker] family,” the Ray-Ban wearing Rafiqi asserts in one post on the Facebook page, “should be hanged publicly.” Elsewhere, he refers to Mr. Abdullah as a kafir, or unbeliever. In another post on the page, a member asserts that Mr. Abdullah has been denied permission for pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia because of his marriage — a canard circulated by Islamists soon after he took power.

Some networks host express calls to violence. “Everybody,” exhorts the administrator of “Times Now is Anti-Kashmiri,” “[the] next time you see any Times Now correspondent pick up a stone and throw that on their face!.” Arnab Goswami, the channel’s editor-in-chief, one user asserts, “should be killed.” Ethnic-Kashmiri anchor Mahrukh Inayet comes in for unprintable abuse targeting her gender.

Barkha Dutt, arguably India’s best-known English-language television journalist, also draws flak. “We hate Barkha Dutt” contains claims that her reportage on the clashes lacked balance. Much of it, though, consists of personal invective — and threats. “Hell is meant for her,” writes network member Faizan Rashid, “but she should have some kinna punishment in this world as well…‘stoned to death’…wot say?”

Facebook’s terms of use prohibit content that is hateful, threatening or incites violence. Little infrastructure, though, seems to be in place to enforce those terms.

Not all protest-linked networks promote these kinds of invective. Barring the odd comment about “Indian dogs,” “I Protest Against the Atrocities on Kashmiris” has no abusive language. Most posts on this network address questions of media bias and political grievances, not individuals.

Even networks like this, though, are remarkable for the complete absence of the very kinds of serious commentary and debate they believe is wanting in India’s mainstream print and electronic media.

There is no way of telling just who the participants on these sites are: users contacted by The Hindu, including Mr. Rafiqi, did not respond to requests to be interviewed. For the most part, though, users seem to be English-speaking and Kashmiri. Judging by their clothing and cultural idiom, are middle-class. Despite the aggressive religious chauvinism evident on the site, there is nothing to suggest substantial numbers of users support established Islamist clerics.

The police say most young people held on the charge of throwing stones do not have a high-school education, and are either unemployed or semi-employed — a class quite distinct from that of the Facebook radical.

More likely than not, official concerns at these networks is exaggerated: their scale and reach is tiny. “I Protest Against the Atrocities on Kashmiris” has 810 members — small numbers compared, for example, with the Palestine solidarity page “Palestine Freedom,” which has 101,178. “We Hate Omar Abdullah” has 675 members and “Civil Disobedience 2010-Quit Kashmir Movement” 134. “Bloody Indian Media,” set up to protest the reportage of the street violence in Srinagar, has 58.

It is possible, though, that the ideas they propagate reflect new ideological trends among some sections of young people in Jammu and Kashmir — a prospect which, if true, holds out a real reason for concern.

ISI’s plot to engage Maoists in terror acts unearthed

ISI”s plot to engage Maoists in terror acts unearthed

PTI

Bangalore, Aug 13 (PTI) A plot by Pakistan”s ISI to engage Maoists to commit terrorist and subversive activities in the country has been unearthed with the arrest of two Indian conspirators in the state, a top police official said today. The duo identified as Vinay Kumar (30) and Devaiah were hired by Altaf, who was working at the behest of the Chhota Shakeel faction of Dawood Ibrahim gang, Bangalore City Police Commissioner Shankar Bidari told reporters here.

Vinay hail from Hassan district of Karnataka, while Devaiah from Kodagu district and Altaf from Dakshina Kannada district, he said. Altaf had told the duo that he had been engaged by Chhota Shakeel at the instance of Dawood Ibrahim to garner support of Maoist leaders in India and to engage them on a payment basis to commit terrorist and subversive acts in the country.

He had directed the duo, who were his earlier accomplices, to get in touch with Maoist leaders and to bring them to Dubai for an interaction, Bidari said. Following Altaf”s instructions, the two had contacted certain Maoist leaders in Andhra Pradesh and were about to bring them to Dubai before they were nabbed.

Investigations revealed that Altaf had made arrangements and sent entry permits or visas for three Maoist leaders in Andhra Pradesh — Ram Kripal Pande, Shivakumar Kunta and Shridhar Pasham, and also for Devaiah, he said. Two way tickets from Hyderabad to Dubai were booked through internet by Uranus Travel and Tours, he said, adding that these tickets and entry permits had been seized.

Kerala Islamic Terrorist Madani, Part Of Bangalore Serial Blasts From Start To Finish

“Madani is that he was part of the conspiracy from start to finish.”

Based on Nasir’s statements, cops to probe Madani LeT links

Wed, Aug 18

With leader of the People’s Democratic Party Abdul Naser Madani arrested by the Bangalore police in connection with the July 25, 2008 serial blasts in Bangalore, the focus of investigation by the police is expected to be on the extent of Madani’s involvement in the blasts as well as his possible links to terror outfits.

The former Islamic Sevak Sangh leader has been arrested largely on the basis of statements made against him by his associate Tadiayandavede Nasir, the main accused in the blasts case, who has told the police that Madani was in the loop on the Lashkar-e-Toiba-sponsored bomb plot that killed one person and injured 20.

At three different points in his confession statement to the Bangalore police Nasir has alluded to Madani’s role in the blasts and the Bangalore police has corroborated this with witness accounts.

According to Nasir’s statement, he met Madani around June 2008 when men and materials were being prepared for the bomb plot in Bangalore.

“In this context I met my leader Abdul Naser Madani at his home in Ernakulam and told him about the plans to carry out bomb blasts in Bangalore and took suggestions from him,” says Nasir’s statement recorded in December 2009 after he was nabbed in Bangladesh and brought to Bangalore.

This statement was the first time Madani, who was acquitted in the 1998 Coimbatore blasts case that killed 58 people, was implicated in the Bangalore blasts case and investigators had until this point believed that the plot was largely executed by former associates of a formerly radical leader.

“When we informed Madani about the blasts, he said that he would support us in any way we wanted in carrying out jihadi activities,” says Nasir’s statement.

At another point in his statement Nasir says: “After the explosion of the bombs in Bangalore we spoke to Sarfaraz Nawaz (a Gulf-based former SIMI activist who liasoned with the LeT) then we spoke to Madani on a mobile phone and as per his advice we met him a month later at his office in Anwarserry.”

The case being made out by the Bangalore police against Madani is that he was part of the conspiracy from start to finish. The police have placed statements made by other witnesses supporting the statements made by Nasir.

With the arrest of Madani, a total of 22 people from Kerala have been nabbed in connection with the Bangalore blasts case. Four others named in the case were killed by the security forces in Kashmir in October 2008 when they attempted to slip into PoK, allegedly for terrorism training in a plan allegedly hatched by Nasir.

Among the Indian accused in the case who are still at large are Indian Mujahideen co-founder Riyaz Bhatkal and his associate Ibrahim Moulvi. A red corner notice has been issued for Wali alias Rehan, a Pakistani national and alleged leader of the LeT for the Gulf who facilitated the Bangalore attacks. A total of 31 people are accused in the case.

Asiya Andrabi: Kashmir’s Female Islamic Extremist’s Hypocrisy

August 17, 2010

A mother, a son and Kashmir’s education tragedy

Praveen Swami

Islamist radical Asiya Andrabi wants schools and colleges shut. Her son wants a passport to study abroad.

Last month, Kashmiri Islamist leader Asiya Andrabi lashed out at parents worried about the consequences the weeks of violent street protests she has spearheaded might have for their children.

“Losses of life, material and the education of children,” she said in a July 13 statement, “are inevitable in our freedom struggle. But these cannot be reasons to make compromises. The material sacrifices made by students, cart-pushers or daily-wage labourers have no value when compared to those who are ready to make the supreme sacrifice for the cause of freedom.”

But documents filed in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court suggest that the fugitive Dukhtaran-e-Millat leader’s son does not want to be among the tens of thousands of school and college students who have been locked out of educational institutions since June — or to join the ranks of those dying on Srinagar’s streets.

Petition for passport
In a petition filed before the Jammu and Kashmir High Court on April 30, 2010, Ms. Andrabi’s teenage son Muhammad Bin Qasim had asked to be issued a passport in order to pursue a college education abroad.

Filed on behalf on Mr. Qasim by a maternal uncle, since he was then a minor, the petition says the teenager has “applied for admission in Malaysia and has indicted his first choice as Bachelor of Information Technology and second one as Bachelor of Laws [sic.].”

June, 1992-born Qasim, documents filed in court show, applied for an Indian passport on March 2, 2010. He applied for admission to a university abroad after obtaining 553 out of a possible 750 marks in his final year school examinations last year

However, the Jammu and Kashmir Police, which verifies the antecedents of passport applicants, claims the 18-year-old could be a threat to the state’s security. In a May 24, 2010 response to Qasim’s application, senior additional advocate-general A.M. Magray has stated that the teenager may be “misused” by his anti-India family if allowed to travel abroad.

The Jammu and Kashmir government’s affidavit relies on the fact that several of Qasim’s relatives have been key figures in the State’s anti-India movement. His father, Ashiq Husain Faktoo, a former member of the terrorist group Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, is serving a life sentence for the 1992 murder of human rights activist H.N. Wanchoo. Inayatullah Andrabi, another of Qasim’s uncles, was a founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing, the Islami Jamaat-e-Tulaba. Qasim, then just three, had himself spent 13 months in prison along with his parents after their arrest in 1993.

Ms. Andrabi’s inflammatory polemic has given an increasingly ugly shape to the protests in Kashmir. Earlier this month, she condemned representatives of religious minorities who met with Tehreek-i-Hurriyat chief Syed Ali Shah Geelani to voice their concern at communal strains in the ongoing mobilisation. “Minorities can ask for security from the majority only after we get freedom from India,” she said. Ms. Andrabi also claimed, without basis, that Hindu fundamentalists in Jammu had “burned alive a number of Kashmiri Muslim drivers”.

But there is nothing to show that Qasim is involved in his parents’ politics. Last summer, Ms. Andrabi dragged her son home from Jammu, after learning he had been selected to play in a national-level cricket tournament. “How,” Ms. Andrabi had told the media, “can I let him play for India? My son will never serve a country that is our enemy. It is just impossible.”

“I was playing,” Qasim responded in an interview, “for Kashmir. Cricket is my passion. After Islam and my parents, cricket is everything for me. I just wanted to play at least one national-level match in my life.”

Bleak future
Hundreds of Kashmir families have been exploring educational opportunities outside the region. Schools and universities have been shut since early this summer, when protests on Srinagar’s streets began to escalate. In June, some privately-run schools briefly reopened — but shut down again after Ms. Andrabi warned that she would not be responsible for the consequences. Educational institutions in Jammu have since reported a surge in applications.

Kashmir’s élite, including anti-India secessionists, have long insulated their children’s education from the troubled region’s politics. Incarcerated Islamist leader and lawyer Mian Abdul Qayoom, for example, sent one of his three daughters to study medicine in Darbhanga. His nephew is a ninth-semester student at the Dogra Law College in Jammu — a privately owned institution owned, perhaps ironically, by local Congress leader Gulchain Singh Charak. Two other nephews, and a niece, obtained degrees in law and science from Pune.

The unfortunate ones
“The élite of our society,” journalist Manzoor Anjum wrote in an editorial commentary in the Urdu-language newspaper Uqab last month, “had already sent their children outside Kashmir for the pursuit of education, and those who had not done so earlier are doing so now. But the people who cannot afford to do so, who are in the majority, are caught between the devil and the deep sea. The bleak future of their children stares them in the face.”

Muslim Countries Show No Enthusiasm For Helping Pakistan Flood Victims

“Its really surprising to see that the Muslim world is not showing any enthusiasm for a country where we see people sacrificing their lives in the name of the Muslim Ummah from any corner of the world,” opined a surprised western diplomat, just to trigger a comparison of the aid pouring in from across the world for Pakistani flood victims. Quoting charts from this newspaper, one of them said that out of $460 million needed for flood victims, as assessed by UN agencies for relief efforts, just over $100 million had reached the various UN organs while the government of Pakistan had collected only $25 million (mostly in-kind) from various countries. “

Via Daily Times Link

Monday, August 16, 2010

DIPLOMATIC BUBBLES: Disaster tourism amidst concern for Muslim Ummah —By Saeed Minhas

ISLAMABAD: The worst floods in the living memory of Pakistan remained an obvious topic of concern for the diplomatic corps in Islamabad throughout the week as Europeans and especially UN officials questioned the response of the Muslim world to a mammoth disaster wreaking havoc in the second-most populated Muslim country of the world.

Few gatherings of foreign emissaries rallied around the unending phases of floods happening in across the country, devastating over 15 million people and destroying over two million acres of standing crops while washing away millions of homes and state structures in over 70 – 37 directly and the rest due to the influx of displaced people – flood-affected districts.

“Its really surprising to see that the Muslim world is not showing any enthusiasm for a country where we see people sacrificing their lives in the name of the Muslim Ummah from any corner of the world,” opined a surprised western diplomat, just to trigger a comparison of the aid pouring in from across the world for Pakistani flood victims. Quoting charts from this newspaper, one of them said that out of $460 million needed for flood victims, as assessed by UN agencies for relief efforts, just over $100 million had reached the various UN organs while the government of Pakistan had collected only $25 million (mostly in-kind) from various countries.

One can easily find an amazing contrast in these charts that the majority of the aid, regardless of being in the form of pledges or actually being disbursed, is coming from the western world. Only a handful of Muslim countries, with the exception of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) that is yet to utter a single word of sympathy, have contributed directly (mostly in-kind) to any of the government of Pakistan’s relief appeals.

Countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Egypt and their oil-controlling giant Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has contributed only a couple of hundred million dollars altogether, and that too through the Red Crescent or other International organisations for in-kind donations. Despite knowing that over 65 helicopters, 19 of which come from the US alone, are working around the clock, none of these oil-rich countries have even asked to foot the oil bill or donate oil for these humanitarian sorties. An hour of a helicopter flight costs an estimated Rs 100,000 in fuel expenses alone, and so far as per the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) figures, over 200 hours of flight operations have been carried out throughout Pakistan.

Another diplomat chipped in by saying that all these ‘brothers’ seem to be good enough for political and strategic guarantees but nothing more for Pakistan. Despite there being a double-digit unemployment rate and zero or negative growth in many of the Western countries including the US and UK, most of the aid, both in cash and in-kind was flowing in from Western countries, he said. The response to the unprecedented floods has been lacklustre so far, not only from locals but also from the international community. Figures collected from various organisations show that though the impact of these floods is larger than the 2004 Tsunami, the 2005 Pakistani and 2010 Haiti earthquakes combined, yet the donations or pledges from all sides is less than 25 percent of what each of the above-mentioned disasters received during their respective relief efforts.

A friend from the Mediterranean belt said, “perhaps the international and even Pakistani media has given more attention to the Cameron remarks, President Zardari’s ill-timed visits and corruption prevailing in Pakistan, then to the human catastrophe.” The diplomat from UK, however, said that it hardly matters what is happening in political circles; it is irrelevant that Prime Minister Cameron agreed to meet President Zardari only after getting the assurance that his Indian statement would not be mentioned in the meeting or how Saeeda Warsi managed the meeting at the last minute. What matters now is to find out ways to help these poor people lying out there at the mercy of raging waters, the diplomat added.

A former Pakistani diplomat said that although it remains a fact that the Muslim block is failing in response and the US is leading all relief efforts, yet there is a major cause of concern creeping in with regard to these developments. He appreciated that after the initial days, relief efforts by the US and other UN agencies were diversified and instead of focusing only on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the northern areas, they began operations in Punjab, Sindh and partially in Balochistan, and yet the presence of more than 300 US marines is being talked about in certain circles. At no point in time, he said, the strategic games are put to rest by the right-winged politicians and therefore, once the water recedes, both the Pakistani government and US authorities might find themselves entangled in a clarification phase.

The diplomats were of the unanimous opinion that though the donors’ fatigue factor was a valid one, it also remains a fact that the donors are not finding any credible data from any single official source.

The concern was well taken by all around the table, and most of the diplomats were of the view that despite the ongoing disaster-tourism and disaster politicking, what needed to be focused on in the aftermath of these floods is management and governance.

PFI’s Plan To Convert Kerala Into A Muslim State In The Next 20 Years

Bid on to convert Kerala into a Muslim state: CM
Thiruvananthapuram, July 24, DHNS:

Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan on Saturday said that the radical outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) was aiming to convert Kerala into a Muslim-majority state in the next 20 years.

The chief minister’s revelation has raised many eyebrows as the police has been keeping under wraps all information they had unearthed in their continuing crackdown on the organisation following the ‘palm-chopping’ of a professor.

“The organisation has been pumping money to attract youths. They have also been trying to convert youths from other communities and persuading them to marry Muslim girls,’’ Achuthanandan told reporters in New Delhi.

The chief minister was responding to a question whether the ongoing crackdown would not prove counterproductive. Achuthanandan’s statement also points an accusing finger at the PFI for encouraging ‘love jihad’, something the organisation has been vehemently denying.

Several activists of the organisation have been arrested in the palm-chopping incident allegedly carried out to protest against the “insulting of the prophet” in a question paper. Incriminating literature, proof of big cash transactions and seditious CDs have been seized from the houses of PFI activists.

The chief minister said that such dangerous organisations should be isolated. The PFI was under the police scanner, which had already banned their annual statewide “freedom march” on August 15.

Meanwhile, Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said here that the police were trying to find out whether the PFI was a reincarnation of the banned SIMI.

“The organisation was trying to attract Muslim youths towards the path of terrorism. However, a majority are not following them. The state government’s policy was not to harass or victimise the Muslim community in the name of the ongoing investigations as the Opposition had alleged,” he said.

Islamic terrorists carried out IPL blasts at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru

The Indian Mujahideen operative who planned IPL blasts
August 19, 2010

The blasts at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru, which created panic among the spectators who had gathered there to watch a game of the Indian Premier League on April 17 this year, were planned and carried out by the Indian Mujahideen, according to the city police.

According to the Bengaluru police, Indian Mujahideen operative Salman alias Chotu was the mastermind behind the blasts. Incidentally, Salman was arrested by the police a month before the blasts.

Bengaluru police officials told rediff.com that investigations into the case point to Salman’s involvement.

Salman, a wanted accused in many cases, is one of the main operatives of the terror outfit, say sources in the Intelligence Bureau.

According to IB sources, Salman was trained in Pakistan and he played a role in the serial blasts in Jaipur on May 13, 2008. He planted the bomb at the Manak Chowk area, say sources. The blasts had claimed 60 lives in Pink City.

Salman was later roped in for bigger terror operations and he played a role in the Delhi serial blasts as well. He was arrested by the Delhi police in March this year.

He will be initially interrogated by the Rajasthan police before the Bengaluru police can get access to him.

Vicky Nanjappa

Hindu victim of Pakistan air crash labelled ‘kafir’

Hindu victim of Pak air crash labelled ‘kafir’

Updated on Thursday, August 05, 2010

New Delhi: The labelling of the coffin of a Hindu killed in last week’s plane crash in Islamabad as ‘kafir’ (non-believer) by the authorities raised a storm in Pakistan over the treatment meted out to minorities in the country.

Premchand, a social worker from Sanghar in Sindh, was one of the six members of the Youth Parliament, who died in the plane crash.

The controversy erupted after friends of Premchand claimed that his coffin came marked ‘kafir or ‘infidel’ – mostly used as a serious slur in Pakistan – written out in bold strokes as it lay at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences awaiting collection by his devastated family.

Although, the incident is being termed as “clerical error”, reactions in Pakistan range from remorse and disgust at denying the youngster respect in death.

“It was shocking. He could have been marked as Hindu or non-Muslim, but using the word ‘kafir’ is the worst example of intolerance.’’ Muneeb Afzal, a Member of the Youth Parliament (MYP) was quoted as saying.

Expressing their anger and remorse in online discussion forums, Premchand’s friends said the death of all passengers, irrespective of their caste, colour and religion, should have been treated as a matter of national tragedy.

Several members of the Youth Parliament wrote, “Literally labelling someone’s coffin as ‘kafir’ and not even giving them the respect to list their religion by its proper name is a shameful and disgusting way to disrespect the last remains of anyone. All the more so the last remains of a patriotic Pakistani, who was on that plane solely to represent Pakistan, and to seek to be a better citizen, deserved a much better treatment.’’

MYPs, in a good gesture, later wrote on his coffin, “We love you – from the Youth Parliament’’