INTERNATIONAL
Monday, October 18, 2010
11
Goat sacrifice fight spurs fatal stampede in India 10 killed in a crammed temple
MULTAN: Pakistani groom Azhar Haidri (right) sits with relatives during his first wedding ceremony in Multan. — AP
One man’s love vs custom 2 brides, 2 days? MULTAN: A 23-year-old Pakistani man plans to marry two women in 24 hours, gaining national attention for his novel solution to a dilemma over wedding the woman he loves or going ahead with the marriage his family arranged. Pakistani law allows polygamy based on the concept that Islam, the main religion in the country, allows up to four wives. But men who take multiple wives usually do so years apart and must get approval from their first wife prior to a second marriage. Azhar Haidri initially refused to marry 28-year-old Humaira Qasim - the woman to whom he has been engaged since childhood because he wanted to marry the woman with whom he had fallen in love, 21-year-old Rumana Aslam. But the decision threatened to split his
family apart since arranged marriages are often customary in Pakistan. “I gave this offer that I will marry both of them,” Haidri told The Associated Press ahead of his first marriage to Qasim yesterday in the central Pakistani city of Multan. “Both the girls agreed.” He is scheduled to marry Aslam today. Several Pakistani television stations plan to carry the nuptials live given the unique circumstances. For their part, both woman say they think the compromise is a good one and they plan to live as sisters and friends. “I am happy that we both love the same man,” Aslam said. Haidri - an herbal medicine practitioner - counts himself lucky. “It is also very rare that two women are happily agreeing to marry one man,” he said. — AP
Iran arrests six Afghan military officers, soldier TEHRAN: Iran has arrested six Afghan military officers and a soldier who said they were hunting for Taleban militants in the border province of Sistan-Baluchestan, ISNA news agency reported yesterday. Border police arrested the seven Afghan military personnel 50 metres (yards) inside Iranian territory, border police commander Hossein Zolfaghari said, quoted by ISNA, without giving a date. Zolfaghari said the arrested group said they were “patrolling the area and hunting for Taleban (militants), and that they had no intention to enter Iranian soil”. Sistan-Baluchestan in southeast Iran bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan is an area rife with a Sunni Muslim Baluchi insurgency against Tehran, tribal unrest and drug smuggling. “The case of the arrested people is being investigated by the judiciary,” Zolfaghari said, adding that border police had confiscated a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and six rifles from the group. The arrests were made as the “armed people driving a vehicle without a
proper number plate crossed the border into SistanBaluchestan”. “They were stopped and arrested by border police after shots were fired,” the officer said, without elaborating. Kabul has good ties with Tehran despite being heavily reliant militarily and financially on the United States, which has been at loggerheads with the Islamic republic for more than three decades. But despite their rivalry, Washington and Tehran are both sworn enemies of the Sunni militia Taleban which ruled Kabul from 1996 to 2001, before being overthrown in a US-led invasion. The news of the arrests of Afghan military personnel comes less than two weeks after Afghan police said they had seized nearly 20 tonnes of explosives stashed in boxes marked “food, toys and kitchenware” imported from Iran. The discovery was made in the western Afghan province of Nimroz on the Iranian border. Bombs made from old ammunition and explosives are the main weapon used by the Taleban and other insur-
gents fighting the Westernbacked Afghan government and US-led troops deployed in Afghanistan. Foreign military commanders and some Afghan officials have accused Iran of providing weapons to the Taleban, the chief group leading the insurgency in Afghanistan. Tehran denies the charges and senior Afghan administration officials say they have no evidence against Iran. Iran, meanwhile, often participates in conferences aimed at stabilising Afghanistan. In August, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosted a minisummit with his Afghan and Tajik counterparts at which he denounced the deployment of foreign troops and insisted regional countries resolve issues in Afghanistan. Shiite Iran, which has close ethnic and religious ties with Afghanistan, has also long suffered from the impact of opium production in its eastern neighbour, with easily available heroin fuelling a big rise in drug use at home. Afghanistan is the source of 90 percent of the world’s heroin. — AFP
KARACHI: An injured victim of shooting incident is treated at a local hospital in Karachi. — AP
PATNA: An argument over sacrificing goats during a Hindu festival triggered a stampede that killed 10 people yesterday in a packed temple in northern India, officials said. More than 40,000 people, many inebriated, had taken their goats to the Tildiha village temple in Bihar state to offer sacrifice and prayers to the goddess Durga on the last day of the Navratri festival. As the worshippers lined up before the butcher, a scuffle broke out and some people were trampled, Banka district spokesman Gupdeshwar Kumar said. “People were vying with each other to get their goats sacrificed first, and they had a verbal duel with the butcher,” Kumar said. Four women and six men died in the stampede, and another 11 were injured, three of them critically, Banka district police director Neelmani said. The injured were being treated in hospitals. Villager Umesh Kumar, 35, said the temple was so full, “people didn’t have any place to walk around ... and there was a commotion when people tried to have their goats sacrificed.” The district spokesman said some 30,000 goats were sacrificed at the temple on Saturday. The 10day Navratri festival honors Durga, the Mother Goddess in the Hindu religion. The village in Banka district is about 120 miles southeast of Bihar’s state capital, Patna. — AP
ALLAHABAD: Hindu devotees smear Goddess Durga with vermillion as part of Vijayadashmi rituals, in Allahabad yesterday. — AP
Blasts hit Kandahar KANDAHAR: A series of blasts killed at least two civilians and wounded several others in Afghanistan’s main southern city, the scene of several recent deadly attacks on police. Helicopters patrolled above the city yesterday as NATO and Afghan troops were deployed to seal off the attack sites. Ambulances with sirens wailing ferried victims to local hospitals. In one attack, a motorized rickshaw carrying explosives detonated behind police headquarters in the center of the city, said Zelmai Ayubi, spokesman for the governor of Kandahar province. One bystander was killed and three others wounded, Ayubi said. On the eastern side of the city, insurgents attacked an oil tanker with gunfire, causing it to explode. One civilian was killed and at least two others were wounded. A rocket fired by militants slammed into a prison compound in the city’s west, police said. No casualties were immediately reported. Another explosion went off in the city’s business district, also in the west. Details were not immediately available.
Kandahar city has been a target for militants this month. Two explosions killed nine people and wounded two dozen others on Oct 6. Three blasts just minutes apart killed three Afghan police officers in the city Oct 5. International and Afghan troops have been ramping up security in Kandahar city for months in an effort to grasp control of the country’s largest southern city, where Taleban influence is high. A series of checkpoints have been set up around the city in an attempt to keep insurgents from entering and carrying out attacks. Control of Kandahar, the Taleban movement’s birthplace, is seen as key to reversing Taleban momentum in the war. The nearly 150,000 international troops and 220,000 Afghan security forces are still struggling to gain the upper hand against an estimated 30,000 insurgents. The embattled south is the scene of Operation Dragon Strike, launched last month by NATO and Afghan forces in areas around Kandahar to flush out entrenched Taleban fighters and destroy their
Police probe Gitmo detainee book deal ‘Guantanamo: My Journey’ CANBERRA: Australian police said yesterday that they are considering whether the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to plead guilty to a terrorism offense should be sued for any profits he makes from his autobiography. David Hicks, a 35-year-old ex-kangaroo skinner and Outback cowboy, was held in US custody at the military detention center in Cuba for more than five years before striking a plea deal in 2007 that returned him home to Australia to serve a nine-month prison sentence. Under Australian law, criminals can be sued for money that a federal court determines is proceeds from their crimes, including indirect profits from book and movie deals. It is unclear whether the law applies to Hicks, since be pleaded guilty before a US military commission, part of a justice system that has been widely criticized by lawyers and governments as unfair. In his book “Guantanamo: My Journey,” which was released in Australia on Saturday, Hicks wrote that he only admitted to a charge of providing material support to AlQaeda to escape Cuba. He said his only options were to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit or to kill himself. “To plead guilty was really saying that the system was unfair and I could never win, not that I ever provided
support to a terrorist organization,” he wrote. He also wrote that the US authorities offered detainees inducements including illicit drugs and prostitutes to gain their cooperation. Attorney General Robert McClelland’s spokesman, Daniel Gleeson, said the Australian Federal Police would have to investigate and provide federal prosecutors with a brief of evidence before they could decide whether to sue Hicks under the Proceeds of Crime Act. Police said in a statement yesterday that they are “considering whether there are grounds to investigate in relation to this matter.” Judy Jamieson-Green, spokeswoman for Hicks’ publisher Random House Australia, declined to say whether the author would profit from his 465-page book, which retails in Australia for 49.95 Australian dollars ($49.48). “That’s not something I’m commenting on. That’s a private matter between Random House and David Hicks,” Jamieson-Green said. “All legal ramifications are obviously matters for David and his lawyers,” she added. Hicks, who lives in Sydney, could not immediately be reached for comment yesterday. He wrote that as part of his plea bargain, he had agreed to give any profits he made from his story to the Australian government. — AP
strongholds. Separately, two NATO service members were killed Saturday - one after a homemade bomb exploded in the south and one in an insurgent attack in the north. NATO did not disclose their nationalities or details of their deaths. Fortysix US and international troops have been killed in Afghanistan so far this month. The nine-year war has also inflicted a mounting toll on Afghan civilians who are caught in the crossfire. In the Afghan capital, President Hamid Karzai said he had high hopes for a new peace council to negotiate with Taleban leaders he’s been meeting, according to a statement released Saturday by his office. The president’s comments echoed a drumbeat of optimism being voiced by US and NATO military officials and the head of the peace council, who said he is convinced the insurgents are ready to negotiate. It’s unclear whether there is enough evidence to support claims that the US and international forces are reversing the Taleban’s momentum. NATO military officials said troops are engaged in fierce fighting and it’s premature to
declare that the tide of the war has turned against the insurgents. Still, with President Barack Obama’s December review just weeks away, political pressure is mounting to show progress. Obama administration officials this week threw their support behind the 70-member peace council that is charged with setting up a formal dialogue with insurgents, following informal discussions that Karzai has had with Taleban leaders. “I have had personal meetings with some Taleban leaders, and my colleagues from my government have had some meetings in and outside Afghanistan with the Taleban,” he said in an interview with Al-Jazeera’s David Frost, according to the statement released by his office. In the interview, aired Friday, Karzai said the formation of the peace council was an important step toward finding an end to the 9-year-old war, the statement said. The Taleban, which has denied that its leaders are in talks, has long said it will not come to the negotiating table until after US and NATO troops leave the country. — AP