Indian doctor fighting for Pak citizenship delivers baby boy

ISLAMABAD, Aug 5: The Indian lady doctor married to a Pakistani national and fighting a legal battle for citizenship has delivered a baby boy in Mardan in the north west frontier province.

Divya Dayanan, who hails from Kerala, lives in Mardan with her husband Aman Khan and in-laws and is working in one of the local hospitals.

Dayanan, who converted to Islam after marriage in July 2003 and changed her name to Hafsa, delivered a baby boy yesterday, Aman Khan told PTI over phone from Mardan.

Both the mother and the child are doing well and have been discharged from the hospital, he said.

The lady doctor hit the headlines recently after Pakistan’s Interior Ministry declined to grant her citizenship despite her marriage to a Pakistani.

Her lawyer subsequently filed a case in the Peshawar High Court contesting the interior ministry’s decision after which she was granted two months extension of her visa.

Her case would come up for hearing on September 9 and if she fails to get citizenship, she would have to leave the country the same month.

Khan said the Pakistani Government’s refusal to grant his wife a visa has traumatised the entire family.

"It is an arduous struggle for my wife and the entire family due to the Government’s decision not to grant Dr Hafsa the citizenship. I am not sure what will be the fate of the child," he said.

Khan said his wife was not granted citizenship even though it was a routine matter, adding in the past any foreigner woman marrying a Pakistani automatically got the citizenship under the Citizenship Act.

He said it was sad that she was denied citizenship at a time peace talks were going on between India and Pakistan.

She was denied citizenship even though he and his wife had become acting of ambassadors of peace and friendship between the two countries, Khan said.

The couple were currently examining various options, including travel to india to visit his wife’s mother Vasantha Dayanan in Kayankulam in Kerala.

Vasantha has already sought help of the Indian High Commission to make arrangements for the couple to travel to India. The Indian High Commission officials have promised to grant visa to Khan.

Dayanan’s case is the second one from Mardan to have been denied citizenship. Another Indian woman, Aquila Durrani, married to a Pakistani has also been denied Pakistani citizenship. She gave birth to a girl few days ago in Mardan.

Durrani was married to Imtiaz Ahmad of Kaskoorona, Mardan last year. Her father, Abdul Qudoos, was a Pakistani national and received his initial education from Mardan and later migrated to Bombay in 1961. Her request for Pakistani citizenship was turned down the interior division, Islamabad, in February.

Both Dayanan and Durrani have filed separate petitions before the Peshawar High Court challenging the denial of citizenship. Durrani also filed an application in the High Court, requesting the new-born girl be included as petitioner in the petition pending before the court. (PTI)

Fiji’s Vice President convicted of involvement in 2000 coup

SUVA, FIJI, Aug 5: Fiji’s High Court convicted the Vice President today for his role in a 2000 nationalist coup that ousted the first India-born Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry in this South Pacific island nation.

Vice President Jope Seniloli was accused of backing the two-month coup led by ethnic Fijian nationalist George Speight, and briefly serving as the country’s President. Seniloli was convicted of administering an illegal oath of office, for swearing in speight and a group of ministers in the rebel Government.

The four other defendants, Parliament’s Deputy Speaker Rakuita Vakalalabure and three businessmen, were convicted on the same charge.

Judge Nazhat Shamem ordered them detained pending sentencing tomorrow.

Parliamentary opposition leader Mick Beddoes hailed the verdict as marking "the re-emergence of law and order in Fiji."

The defendants claimed they were coerced into participating in the coup by speight, who said he wanted to restore power to indigenous Fijians.

But prosecutors said they weren’t forced and that Seniloli knew about the coup before it took place on May 19, 2000.

There was no immediate reaction to the verdicts from the democratically elected Government of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase.

Fiji security forces were on high alert around the capital, Suva, after warning that no protests would be tolerated.

Seniloli had been a minor provincial administrator and traditional chief in Tailevu province, where Speight and other key coup plotters hailed. He was sworn in as President after Speight overthrew Chaudhry but only held the role briefly.

Speight is serving a life sentence for treason after being arrested in the aftermath of the coup.

Chaudhry’s ethnic-Indian dominated cabinet and lawmakers from his Fiji Labour party were held hostage for 56 days by the coup plotters before they gave in to military authorities.

Sports Minister Sireli Leweniqila, the sixth man tried on the charge, was acquitted by the five-member jury.

The conviction means Seniloli loses his post as Vice President. The Deputy Speaker also is expected to lose his Parliamentary posts if he is imprisoned.

The chairman of the electoral council which selects Fiji’s Vice Presidents, Ratu Ovini Bokini, said he was shocked by the verdict and that his council would have to convene to select a replacement for Seniloli.

The maximum sentence for the crime is life imprisonment, which in Fiji normally means 10 years. Prosecutors have told the court they will seek a minimum of no less than seven years to life for the five convicted men.

Police Commissioner Andrew Hughes, an Australian appointed to the post last year, said last week that any acts aimed at destabilizing the country in the wake of the trial would not be tolerated. (AP)

Top British Al-Qaeda operative reported held in Tuesday’s roundup

LONDON, Aug 5: A top Al-Qaeda agent involved in planning an attack on London’s heathrow airport is among 12 men being held by police, according to reports on CNN and Britain’s times newspaper today.

The arrests follow the arrest in Pakistan last month of 25-year-old computer expert Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan and the seizure of his computer files.

A senior police official told the times one of the men detained in London in Tuesday’s raids was regarded as "a significant figure", but police have declined to comment on any link between the raids and events in Pakistan.

Examination of the files led to heightened security in the eastern United States and to reports that Britain was also mentioned as a target, although there were no details.

Pakistani intelligence officials told CNN that Khan had revealed the existence of an Al-Qaeda terror network in Britain, giving the codename of the top agent as "bilal". The cable network broadcast the report from the United States Wednesday evening.

That intelligence is said to have led to the arrest under terrorism laws Tuesday of 13 men "of Asian origin" in the London area and the north of England. One of the men has been released.

Khan’s father is reported to have worked for Pakistan’s state-run airline and to have obtained five tickets in his son’s name for travel between Pakistan and London over the past five years.

Khan is also reported to have attended a training camp in Afghanistan in 1998 and worked alongside Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, an Al-Qaeda operative arrested in Pakistan in April.

The Times reported Pakistani officials said an attack on heathrow was "in the final stages of planning". The man codenamed Bilal was receiving "direct orders" from Osama bin Laden, they said.

Among the documents found on Khan’s computer were maps of heathrow, along with messages between Pakistan and Britain regarding an attack.

The Times said its Pakistani intelligence source would not divulge details of any timetable for the attack or say whether the terrorists were planning to use truck bombs to blow up passenger terminals and other buildings or fire missiles at a passenger jet.

"What we can say for certain is the plan was drawn up quite recently. Bilal was to execute the plan," the source said.

He identified the British terrorist commander as Abu Musa-al- Hindi, adding that Al-Qaeda suspects were known to have a number of aliases and use false documents.

London police have long feared an attack on heathrow, using either a vehicle bomb or a hand-held surface-to-air missile to bring down an aircraft. There have been reports that a sam missile has been smuggled into Britain.

Al-Qaeda is believed to have been behind a failed missile attack on an Israeli aircraft at Mombasa airport in Kenya in November 2002.

Despite concern over terror attacks, a Parliamentary committee published a report yesterday criticising current anti-terrorist laws as damaging to human rights.

Leaders of Britain’s Muslims - who number up to two million -have criticised police for targeting their community, and civil libertarians have highlighted that arrests under the laws have rarely led to convictions.

The home office said yesterday that by the end of June this year 609 people had been arrested under the Terrorism Act since September 11, 2001, but just 99 had been charged with offences and 15 convicted. (DPA)

Al-Qaeda cased major targets in NY and Washington

NEW YORK, Aug 5: US intelligence has evidence Al-Qaeda operatives cased major targets in New York and Washington from the inside as a part of a meticulous surveillance operation that managed to obtain unusual access.

The evidence in the form of information found on the computer files of Mohammed Khan, the 25-year-old computer engineer who was arrested last month in Pakistan, is responsible for the current terror alert at financial centers in New York, Washington, DC, and Newark in New York.

Khan’s records, abc television network reported, continue to yield critical clues about Al-Qaeda’s operations, including indications that he may have communicated with several people in the United States in recent months.

His computer files, written in English, narrate the travels of Al-Qaeda members throughout the buildings, offering step-by-step colour commentary in rich detail, ABC quoted sources as saying.

The documents suggest the facilities were under surveillance morning and night, with operatives looking for times when security was lax and when the most potential victims were present.

Khan’s computer files show Al-Qaeda operatives thoroughly casing the financial centers both outside and inside just before the attacks of Sept 11, 2001 attacks, it quoted sources as saying.

Law enforcement officials said the bulk of the extensive surveillance was conducted on the Citigroup center in Manhattan, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington, and Prudential financial inc.’s headquarters in Newark.

Federal officials publicly identified those targets earlier this week, along with the New York Stock Exchange.

Meanwhile, media reports said a third person, separate from the two prisoners and documents previously disclosed also provided information indicating Al-Qaeda was planning to attack American and international financial institutions.

The White House described the information as "another new stream of intelligence" that supported its decision to issue the warning.

A senior justice department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, also corroborated the same.

"Given the specificity that apparently are in these reports, that they were not just casual targets. These were real targets," former FBI counterterrorism agent Jack Cloonan was quoted as saying.

Al-Qaeda’s attention to the interior of buildings is one reason why the FBI has warned police not only about the potential for truck bomb attacks, but also about the possibility of bombings from the inside, as well as biological and chemical attacks.

Former FBI analyst Matthew Levitt, now a senior fellow at the Washington institute for near east policy said, "I think their primary objective is just to kill as many people as possible" (PTI)

Conjoined boys from Philippines separated at Bronx hospital

NEW YORK, Aug 5: Carl and clarence Aguirre, the two-year-old twins from the Philippines who were joined at the tops of their heads, were surgically separated, hospital officials said.

Doctors seperated abutting portions of the boys’ brains at 0802 ist today after completing an incision around their skull, said Steve Osborne, spokesman, children’s hospital at Montefiore Medical Centre.

The boys survived, and doctors, nurses and technicians applauded in the operating room, Osborne said.

The twins’ head-to-head operating tables were then pulled apart slightly, said Osborne, present in the room.

The separation climaxed a gradual approach that lasted 10 months, a departure from the more common marathon operations that have separated other conjoined twins. (AP)

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