PESHAWAR: Pakistan has refused to grant identity cards to the family of Shakeel Afridi, the jailed doctor who helped the CIA hunt for Osama bin Laden, his lawyer said, effectively denying them passports and voting rights.
Afridi has been languishing in prison for more than five years after his fake vaccination program helped the CIA track and kill the Al-Qaeda leader.
His lawyer Qamar Nadim told AFP Wednesday that officials are refusing to renew Afridi’s wife’s ID card, which expired in December, because her husband’s card had lapsed in 2014. He has also been denied a new card.
Officials are similarly refusing to grant new cards to his two children, said Nadim, who has been denied access to his client for more than two years.
ID cards in Pakistan are a key proof of citizenship. Without one, Pakistanis cannot get passports or vote, register for a phone number or get utilities installed, buy property or enrol children in school, and could face delays at security checkpoints, among other things.
“Why are they punishing the entire family? It’s not justice, it’s cruelty,” Nadim said, adding he will challenge the decision in court in the northwestern city of Peshawar this week.
Officials from the Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The refusal to grant ID cards means Afridi’s son and daughter are now facing problems getting admission to college, the doctor’s brother Jamil told AFP.
“So the family can’t go abroad and the children are facing difficulties in continuing their education,” he said.
Afridi was jailed for 33 years in May 2012 after he was convicted of ties to militants, a charge he has always denied. Some US lawmakers said the case was revenge for his help in the search for the Al-Qaeda chief.
Last year a US threat to cut aid to Pakistan saw a tribunal slice 10 years off his sentence — but since then US pressure for his release has tapered off.
Pakistan tightens screws on Bin Laden doctor’s family
Pakistan tightens screws on Bin Laden doctor’s family
Russian mercenary Prigozhin’s statue unveiled at his grave
Mourners, including soldiers wearing Wagner insignia, some with their faces covered, laid flowers at the feet of the statue
SAINT PETERSBURG: Mourners and soldiers on Saturday laid flowers at a new statue to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a pro-Kremlin mercenary who staged a mutiny and died in a plane crash, at his grave in Saint Petersburg.
Prigozhin was head of the Wagner private militia, which fought alongside Russian troops in Ukraine, capturing the city of Bakhmut in a grinding months-long assault.
He staged a 24-hour mutiny last June, seizing Russian military command buildings in the southern city of Rostov and marching on Moscow in a bid to oust the country’s military leaders.
In voice messages published to social media he had raged daily against what he said was corruption and mismanagement of the offensive by bureaucrats in the defense ministry and General Staff.
Two months later, after backing down and being scolded as a traitor by President Vladimir Putin, he died in a plane crash.
On Saturday, when he would have turned 63, a bronze statue of Prigozhin was unveiled at his grave in Saint Petersburg’s Porokhovskoye cemetery.
Mourners, including soldiers wearing Wagner insignia, some with their faces covered, laid flowers at the feet of the statue, an AFP reporter saw.
A makeshift memorial to Prigozhin, who was popular among his troops and supported by many of Russia’s pro-offensive military bloggers, has stood for months in Moscow close to the Kremlin.
He was initially buried in a secret funeral following the plane crash.
Putin, who said grenade fragments were found in the plane’s wreckage, called him a “talented” man who had made “serious mistakes” after his death.
The Kremlin has denied involvement in the crash.
Putin last month removed long-time defense chief Sergei Shoigu, who had been the target of Prigozhin’s criticism, and several senior military figures have been arrested on corruption charges.
TV exit poll summary projects victory for Indian PM Modi in general election
- Nearly one billion people were eligible to vote in the seven-phase election that began on April 19
NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance is projected to win a majority in the general election that concluded on Saturday, an exit poll summary by the NDTV news channel said.
The summary of two exit polls projected the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) could win more than 350 seats in the 543-member lower house of parliament, where 272 is needed for a simple majority.
The NDA won 353 in the 2019 election.
The opposition INDIA alliance led by the Congress party was projected to win more than 120 seats.
Exit polls have a patchy record in India as they have often got election outcomes wrong, with analysts saying it is a challenge to get them right in the large and diverse country.
Nearly one billion people were eligible to vote in the seven-phase election that began on April 19 and was held in scorching summer heat in many parts.
The Election Commission will count votes polled in electronic voting machines on June 4 and results are expected the same day.
A victory for Modi, 73, will make him only the second prime minister after independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru to win three consecutive terms.
London police call on Turkish and Kurdish communities for help after shooting leaves 9-year-old fighting for life
- The child was in restaurant in east of the city on Wednesday when gunman on a motorbike opened fire
- The nine-year-old girl was shot and remains in critical condition
LONDON: Police in London are appealing to the city’s Turkish and Kurdish communities for information about a drive-by shooting that has left a nine-year-old girl fighting for her life.
The child was in a restaurant in the east of the city on Wednesday when a gunman on a motorbike opened fire on men sitting outside. Three of the men were taken to hospital, with two in a serious condition.
The nine-year-old girl was shot and is in critical condition, a police statement confirmed on Friday.
“We remain in close contact with our colleagues in the NHS who have worked around the clock to provide urgent care to the victims, including the young girl, who I’m very sad to say remains in a critical condition,” Detective Chief Superintendent James Conway said.
Conway called for assistance from Turkish and Kurdish people living in London to find the assailants, who used a stolen Ducati motorbike in the attack, because the three men injured in the shooting “have connections to those communities.”
Conway said: “This shocking attack will have had an element of pre-planning. This means there are people out there who know something which may be crucial to our investigation. Gun crime has no place on the streets of London and this reckless act has left a young child fighting for her life.
“We are specifically reaching out to our Turkish and Kurdish communities, particularly in north and east London, who I know are shocked and appalled by this crime. This is because the three men who were shot have connections to those communities,” he added.
Speaking to The Times newspaper, the chief executive of the Turkish Cypriot Community Association in London, Erim Metto, said: “As a community we’re totally and utterly shocked by the incident that occurred at the restaurant on Wednesday. As people, as members of the community, we need to feel safe that, as we’re commuting, we can enter stores, we can go to restaurants with our families with no threat. Violence has no time in our streets and (of) the four victims which suffered injuries, one of those is a child.
Metto added: “We need to request from people in the community to come forward with information that will help with the investigation. Any small piece of information — we would urge you to contact the lines which have been given by the police and bring that information to the front. Let’s try and help with the investigation if we can.”
North Korea sends balloons with trash into South again
- Earlier this week, North Korea sent around 260 balloons carrying bags of trash
- North Korea is “once again floating balloons carrying waste toward the South,” the JCS said in a text message to reporters.
SEOUL: North Korea again sent trash-carrying balloons into the South on Saturday, the South Korean military said, a day after Seoul warned of countermeasures against such activity.
Earlier this week, North Korea sent around 260 balloons carrying bags of trash, including waste batteries, cigarette butts and what appeared to be manure, according to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Authorities in Seoul condemned that act as “low-class,” and the South Korean unification ministry warned Friday that the government would take countermeasures if Pyongyang did not cease such “irrational” provocations.
North Korea is “once again floating balloons carrying waste toward the South,” the JCS said in a text message to reporters.
It advised the public to refrain from touching the balloons if spotted and to report them to authorities.
The Seoul city government also sent a text alert to residents on Saturday, warning of an “unidentified object presumed to be North Korean propaganda leaflets.”
The object has been “detected in the airspace near Seoul and is currently being addressed by the military,” it said, advising residents to “refrain from outdoor activities.”
Pyongyang defended its release of the balloons earlier this week, saying the “sincere gifts” were retaliation for the balloons sent into North Korea with propaganda against leader Kim Jong Un.
North Korea has long been infuriated by the balloons sent by South Korean activists, which carry anti-Pyongyang leaflets. Sometimes, they have also sent cash, rice or USB thumb drives with South Korean drama series.
South Korean defense minister Shin Won-sik on Saturday said North Korea sending balloons with waste was “unimaginably petty and low-grade behavior.”
He added that the balloons sent into the North by activists were “humanitarian aid balloons.”
In 2018, during a period of improved inter-Korean relations, the leaders of the two Koreas agreed to “completely cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain,” including the distribution of leaflets.
The South Korean parliament passed a law in 2020 criminalizing the act of sending leaflets to the North, but the activists did not stop.
That same year, Pyongyang, blaming the anti-North leaflets, unilaterally cut off all official military and political communication links with the South and blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border.
Last year, South Korea’s Constitutional Court struck down the 2020 law, calling it an undue limitation on free speech.
Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong — one of North Korea’s key spokespeople — mocked South Korea for complaining about the balloons this week, saying North Koreans were simply exercising their freedom of expression.
Heatwave, election workers’ deaths mar final phase of India’s giant vote
- Modi and Gandhi urge voters to visit polling stations despite record temperatures
- Seventh phase of voting on Saturday closed nation’s mammoth general election
NEW DELHI: At least 20 election workers have died from heatstroke, authorities said on Saturday, as Indians went to the polls in the final round of a six-week-long general vote marred by abnormally hot weather.
The seventh round of voting in 57 constituencies across seven states and one union territory completed polling for all 543 seats in the lower house of parliament.
More than 968 million people were eligible to vote, with the first six phases of the mammoth election held on April 19, April 26, May 7, May 13, May 20, and May 25.
Voter turnout was affected by record-high temperatures, as parts of India continued to reel under a prolonged spell of extreme heat, which this week also took the lives of election workers.
At least 14 people, including 10 polling personnel, have died due to heatstroke in the eastern state of Bihar, according to local media reports.
Mahendra Kumar, magistrate in the state’s Bhojpur district, confirmed to Arab News that five poll officials died due to heatstroke in his region on Thursday alone.
In Mirzapur city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, scorching heat killed at least 10 people on duty at polling stations on Friday.
“Seven home guards and three polling personnel have died due to heatstroke,” said Priyanka Niranjan, district magistrate in Mirzapur.
“These people had reached the polling booth where they were supposed to perform their duty. Their health condition deteriorated there, and they were brought to the hospital for medical attention, and they died there.”
The election sees Prime Minister Narendra Modi chasing a rare third straight five-year term, while his key contender, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, seeks his Congress party’s return to power.
Both took to social media to appeal to voters to cast their ballots.
“You should participate enthusiastically in the festival of democracy. I hope that our youngsters and women will come out in large numbers to vote. Let’s come together to make democracy more vibrant,” Modi said.
Gandhi expressed optimism that his party-led alliance would form the next government.
“A new dawn will be ushered in on June 4,” he wrote on X.
Votes will be counted on June 4. The party or coalition that wins at least 272 of the 543 contested seats will form the government.
However, experts say the election results are far from easy to predict.
“This is a different election compared with 2014 and 2019. It is a very difficult election to call what is going to happen,” Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a New Delhi-based political analyst and writer, told Arab News.
“In this election anything is possible — there may be a wave in favor of Modi, there may be a wave against Modi ... Voters this time have been silent, and nobody has really spoken.”
