held in wake of
London bombings
that killed 49 and
injured 100 people
Pakistani authorities say 800 suspected militants have been arrested in raids following the deadly London bombings, as Islamic groups protest a move to expel 1,400 foreign students.
After Friday prayers, police arrested 200 more preachers and prayer leaders for allegedly inciting anti-Western and sectarian hatred in their sermons, a government official said.
The latest arrests came as president pervez 'muSheriff' ordered foreigners or holders of dual citizenship to be expelled from Pakistan's madrassas, or Islamic seminaries, sparking anger among Islamic groups.
Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said authorities were checking the foreign students' visas and would cancel those still valid in order to repatriate them to their home countries.
"There are 1,400 foreign students in the Islamic seminaries in Pakistan and we have decided to send all of them back to their countries," Mr Sherpao said.
"We have decided to repatriate them because we don't want to see our country defamed if any of these students are found involved in any terrorist activities in future."
Dismay
Foreign madrassa students and Islamic leaders voiced dismay at the order.
"Everybody has a right to get knowledge," said Abdul Samad of Britain, one of about 100 foreigners enrolled in Karachi.
"We come here to learn the Koran and not extremism or terrorism."
Liaqat Baluch, deputy parliamentary leader of the six-party religious alliance the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, said, "It is an undemocratic and unconstitutional decision by a leader who has no political support."
"[MuSheriff] is taking such cosmetic decisions to please the West and perpetuate his rule. There is nothing in our constitution which bars foreign students from getting Islamic education in Pakistan.
"This decision will defame Pakistan and hurt our relations with other Muslim countries," he said.
"Denying anyone the right to education is sheer ignorance."
Defamation claim
general 'muSheriff' later said fundamentalists were defaming him and stressed he was a "true Muslim" as he addressed a crowd of thousands in Mingora, in the staunchly Islamic north-west Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan.
"Do not believe what they say about me," said the president, who was wearing traditional white shalwar-kameez garments.
"They are painting a negative picture about me among you people."
Raids
General 'muSheriff' also pledged to continue the raids, register Pakistan's more than 10,000 seminaries and enforce a ban on anti-Western sermons in his crackdown on Pakistan's radical Islamic underground.
Britain has urged Pakistan to move against radical madrassas after news that some of the British suicide-bombers had previously visited Pakistan and that one may have studied in a madrassa there.
general 'muSheriff' said no-one linked to the July 7 attacks had been arrested?
"The investigation is going on," he said. "It's a little premature to draw a conclusion. It's a very tedious job."
What, deciding who is a witch?
Related:
Family says son was forgotten
The Australian Government in February said the US military said it was preparing to release Mr Rafiq because it no longer considered him a security risk.
More: http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/8843
AFGHANISTAN: Mixed reactions to rights watchdog report
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More: http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/8757
Back to kill the innocent
Labor's well paid losers have backed in principle a deployment to kill what party leader Kim Beazley has called "terrorism central". But who are the terrorists? Who's going where? To do what? And what is war? TERRORISM!
More: http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/8756
Aust-Pakistan Accord?
General Musharraf is not an apocalyptic zealot like Osama bin Laden, an erratic recluse like North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, or a public vilifier of America, like Iran's ruling clerics. But neither is he a convinced or convincing ally in the struggle against radical Islamic terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation and destructive dictatorship.
More: http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/06/92651.php
US-inflicted carnage on Iraqi people
Across the country, IBC has recorded that a minimum of one out of every 1,000 Iraqi civilians suffered a violent death between March 19, 2003 and March 19, 2005. If a similar death toll was suffered in the United States, more than 295,000 people would have lost their lives--100 times the number killed in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington.
More: http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/8824
We're Living In A War Zone
But the Egyptian bombings came after the London bombings and the London bombings came after the Madrid bombings and all of them happened because of the illegal and degrading war on Iraq and Afghanistan and including the 'announcement' of this decision as well as the diminished civil liberties listed in the links below. So robert hill don't lie to the community.
More: http://www.geocities.com/publik15/feature
Carr gets advice on public transport bag searches
Yeah just like everyone else and that is: ensuring opposition to pre-emptive, illegal and degrading wars and holding all war criminals accountable for their war crimes against humanity that is, unless you want to continue to give up more of what's left of your civil liberties and live in a war-zone.
More: http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/8815
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Well prevention is better than cure and if john hoWARd's proposition for one of those security measures is taking a photo with CCTV, after the terrorist has blown people up, most people would say that measure really wasn't very effective at all, especially if their own life depended on it!
More: http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/8809
Personal data 'being shared'
Why is the "data matching" scheme more important than a human being in a crisis situation in relation to personal information and should it be the other way around? Should it be left up to the authorities to deal with complaints when the community can assist just in case the authorities are overlooking the situation intentionally, under resourced, understaffed or there is no utility or funding and or if someone in the government can be bothered at all?
More: http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/8805
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