ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s political and military leadership on Friday marked the annual Day of Solidarity with Kashmir, vowing to continue political support for those living in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir and for a solution to the disputed region’s status in accordance with U.N. resolutions.
Thousands of people were expected to take part in anti-India rallies across Pakistan, as well as in the portion of Kashmir that Pakistan administers. Prime Minister Imran Khan was set to deliver a speech later Friday in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-held Kashmir.
Kashmir is split between Pakistan and India and claimed by both in its entirety. India accuses Pakistan of arming and training Kashmiri insurgents in India’s portion of the Himalayan region. Pakistan says it only provides moral and diplomatic support and denies it supports militants.
Shibli Faraz, Pakistan’s information minister, told The Associated Press that “the onus is on India to create an enabling environment by rescinding its illegal and unilateral actions,” referring to India’s revoking of Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status in August 2019.
In southwest Pakistan, at least 16 people were wounded when an unknown assailant threw a hand grenade at people standing along a road minutes after a pro-Kashmir rally passed through the area, local police chief Wazir Ali Marri said. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place in Sibi district in Baluchistan province. The restive province has been the scene of a low-level insurgency by separatists demanding a greater share of local natural gas and mineral resources.
In Kashmir, Pakistan has long pushed for the right to self-determination under a U.N. resolution passed in 1948, which called for a referendum on whether Kashmiris wanted to merge with Pakistan or India.
The future of Muslim-majority Kashmir was left unresolved at the end of British colonial rule in 1947, when the Indian subcontinent was divided into predominantly Hindu India and mainly Muslim Pakistan.
India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir. In 2019, a car bombing in Indian-controlled Kashmir killed 40 Indian soldiers and brought the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war.
India has an estimated 700,000 soldiers in its part of Kashmir, fighting nearly a dozen rebel groups since 1989. In many areas, the region has the feel of an occupied country, with soldiers in full combat gear patrolling streets and frisking civilians. More than 68,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the conflict.
Pakistan marks 'Kashmir Day' with rallies, speeches in support in disputed valley
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Pakistan marks 'Kashmir Day' with rallies, speeches in support in disputed valley
- Thousands of people take part in anti-India rallies across Pakistan as well as in the portion of Kashmir that Pakistan administers
- In southwest Pakistan, at least 16 wounded when an unknown assailant threw a hand grenade at people standing along a road for a pro-Kashmir rally
Pakistani man convicted in US in political assassination plot tied to Iranian paramilitary
- Asif Merchant, 47, worked for Pakistani banks for decades before going into clothing and other businesses
- He testified he met a Revolutionary Guard operative who gave him countersurveillance training, assignments
NEW YORK: A Pakistani business owner who tried to hire hit men to kill a US politician was convicted Friday in a trial that showcased allegations of Iran-backed plotting on American soil.
As the Iran war unfolded in the Mideast, Asif Merchant acknowledged in a US court that he sought to put an assassination in motion during the 2024 presidential campaign — a plot that was quickly disrupted by American investigators before it had a chance to proceed.
A jury in Brooklyn convicted Merchant on terrorism and murder for hire charges.
The verdict after only a couple hours of deliberations followed a weeklong trial that included remarkable testimony from Merchant himself.
Merchant told the jury he was carrying out instructions from a contact in the Islamic Republic’s powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. According to Merchant, the handler never specified a target but broached names including then-candidate Donald Trump, then-President Joe Biden and Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador who was also in the race for a time.
The Iranian government has denied trying to kill US officials.
The nascent plot fell apart after Merchant showed an acquaintance what he had in mind by using objects on a napkin to depict a shooting at a rally. He asked the man to help him hire assassins. Instead, he was introduced to undercover FBI agents who were secretly recording him, as had the acquaintance.
Merchant told the supposed hit men he needed services that could include killing “some political person” and paid them $5,000 in cash in a parked car in Manhattan.
“This man landed on American soil hoping to kill President Trump — instead, he was met with the might of American law enforcement,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement released after the conviction.
Merchant’s attorney, Avraham Moskowitz, didn’t immediately reply to a message seeking comment.
Merchant, 47, worked for Pakistani banks for decades before going into clothing and other businesses. He has two families, in Pakistan and Iran, and he sometimes visited the US for his garment business.
Merchant testified that he met a Revolutionary Guard intelligence operative about three years ago. The contact gave him countersurveillance training and assignments including the assassination scheme, Merchant said.
He maintained that he had to do his handler’s bidding to protect loved ones in Iran. The defendant said he reluctantly went through the motions but thought he’d be arrested and explain his situation to authorities before anyone was killed.
“I was going along with it,” he said, speaking in Urdu through a court interpreter.
Prosecutors emphasized that Merchant admitted taking steps to enact the plan on behalf of the Revolutionary Guard, which the US considers a foreign terrorist organization, and he didn’t proactively go to authorities.
Instead, he was packing for a flight to Pakistan when he was arrested on July 12, 2024, a day before an unrelated attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania. Officials said it appeared the Butler gunman acted alone but that they had been tracking a threat on Trump’s life from Iran, a claim that the Islamic Republic called “unsubstantiated and malicious.”
When Merchant subsequently spoke to FBI agents to explore the possibility of a cooperation agreement, he didn’t say he had acted out of fear for his family.
Prosecutors argued that he didn’t back up a defense of acting under duress. Merchant sought to persuade jurors he simply didn’t think the agents would believe him because they seemed to “think that I am some type of super-spy,” which he said he was “absolutely not.”
