Posted on 06/04/2005 5:48:51 PM PDT by Gucho
Sunday, 05 June , 2005
Baghdad: Kassim used to teach geography in the morning and spend afternoons repairing shoes in the streets of the central Iraqi town of Azizyah. Those days are over.
Iraq's 300,000 teachers have seen vast changes since the regime of Saddam Hussein fell in April 2003, and Kassim can now feed his four children without having to cobble a living together.
From an average monthly salary of 10,000 dinars plus food subsidies, they can now earn 300,000-400,000.
The result, says 40-year-old English teacher Jawad Mizhr, is that they can now do their job.
Such is the difference that retired teachers want their old jobs back, if only for a year or two so they can qualify for vastly improved pensions.
Groups like the United Nations children's fund UNICEF and USAID are renewing infrastructure and training teachers to get the level of Iraqi education beyond where it was 25 years ago.
"Iraq's educational system used to be among the best in the region," the UN Development Program (UNDP) said in its 2004 survey of living conditions in Iraq.
But though deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein initially sought to eradicate illiteracy, the combined effects of wars and economic sanctions since 1980 took their toll on teachers and students alike.
In rural areas and among girls in particular, illiteracy is now widespread, but a 5.8-million-dollar USAID program is aimed at turning things around at 84 "model" primary and secondary schools across the country.
In-service training of 100,000 teachers and administrators will "promote child-centered teaching techniques, and introduce state-of-the-art instructional methods in science, math, English and social studies," a statement by the group said.
Computer and science labs are to be installed in many of the "model" schools -- not in the sense of being exceptional, but rather with the goal of setting a standard for future development.
The program has set a modest budget of 70,000 dollars per school to demonstrate what can be done and to encourage future donors to extend the program across Iraq.
From Azizyah, 70 kilometers (45 miles) south of Baghdad, Mizhr told AFP by phone that in the past, families felt school was not important because harsh economic conditions rendered future prospects bleak regardless of one's qualifications.
"Now many families are thinking about having their children continue their education because jobs are much more important."
Teachers are also more motivated. Those sent to neighboring Jordan for training to be shared with colleagues back home consistently spent evenings in optional workshops, a USAID program director said.
"It was the first time someone was investing in them," he told AFP. UNICEF is using a "double cascade" approach whereby 25 people selected by Iraq's ministry of education go through a six-week program before training 440 others who train still more in turn.
Its Accelerated Learning Program targets areas with the lowest enrollment rates and aims to provide out-of-school youth with the equivalent of six years of primary education in roughly half that time.
The goals are ambitious but program officials are aware of certain limits. One of the ministry's priorities was to create a curriculum that included Islamic studies, an area that USAID did not feel was appropriate for them to work on.
Help is available to reform what will be taught and how, but Iraqi officials are to take the lead in curriculum content.
Among the things that Mizhr said remained to be improved were practical issues such as who was posted where.
Within the ministry, the atmosphere is much better and teachers can now speak their minds, but there is a surplus of specialised teachers in areas like English and science in some schools and not enough in others, he said.
Some materials were also now out of date. "We're still using old textbooks, we've just removed the pictures of Saddam."
Sunday June 5, 04:00 PM
Australian Defence Minister Robert Hill says he will encourage China to join regional anti-terrorism efforts when he visits Beijing this week.
Citing Australia's growing cooperation with South-East Asia - such as in the ASEAN Regional Forum - Hill said China could be more involved in fighting terrorism.
"The real objective is therefore to encourage China's participation because we know that the only way to successfully combat terrorism is through cooperation," he told an Asian defence conference.
"China has significant resources that it can bring to bear," Hill said. "We need to convince them that we recognise those resources and that there is an important role that they can play.
"So that really is what I seek to do in my dialogue with the Chinese," he said.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry official at the conference said discussions with various countries were already under way.
"China firmly supports enhanced regional security cooperation," said Li Yang, a director at the ministry's Asia department. He said any suggestions China was reluctant to get involved in such cooperation were "not fair and not true".
Hill plans to visit Beijing this week, though details including exact dates haven't been released.
Philippine Defence Secretary Avelino Cruz, speaking on the same panel as Hill, said Manila already cooperates with Beijing in combating drug trafficking, so working together on anti-terror measures would be a natural next step.
Beijing already works with Central Asian countries such as Kazakhstan in combating terrorism and has held joint military exercises with close ally Pakistan in north-west China's majority-Muslim region of Xinjiang.
China is deeply suspicious of US-led efforts, said Chinese scholar Xiang Lanxin, a history and politics professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.
It has "never subscribed to the American conception of a war on terror", he said.
China opposed the US-led war on Iraq.
Gaza pullout protesters lock Israeli govt offices
05 Jun 2005 06:23:36 GMT
Source: Reuters
JERUSALEM, June 5 (Reuters) - Right-wing Jews sealed shut some government offices with superglue and chains early on Sunday as part of a campaign against Israel's plan to withdraw settlers from the Gaza Strip, police said.
Police arrested five 16-year-olds suspected of involvement in sealing an Education Ministry building and a courthouse in the Jerusalem area as well as a stock-trading watchdog office, police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.
Israel's Channel 2 television showed a queue of people waiting outside a sealed Interior Ministry office in a Tel Aviv suburb with a pamphlet left on the door that read: "We shall not let the deportation happen!"
Israeli media reported an unidentified pro-settler group said it had sealed 150 public offices in protest at Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to uproot settlements from occupied Gaza and the northern West Bank in August.
Sunday is the start of the working week in Israel.
Ben-Ruby said police had foiled an attempt to seal an office responsible for dispensing compensation to the 9,000 settlers set to be evacuated from 21 enclaves in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank.
Most of the settlers have vowed to passively resist evacuation from land they see as a biblical birthright.
Supporters, many of them far-right teenagers, have stepped up protests against the withdrawal in recent weeks by disrupting traffic with blockades of burning tyres.
Police arrested 15 Israelis for blocking the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway on Saturday night, Israel Radio said.
AlertNet news
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L05275181.htm
And Gucho, I loved the pic of The Nuge and his Shermane with Texas Governor Perry. Thanks. :-)
Hope all is well with both of you.
Bump.
Iraqi army soldiers display documents, left and right, found on suspected militant, Egyptian national al-Sayed Mansour Abdul-Ghani, centre, who was arrested during a raid in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib neighborhood, Sunday June 5, 2005. Both documents are Egyptian passports which Iraqi authorities claim could be fake. (AP Photo/Mohammed Uraibi)
Iraqi army soldiers hold Khalid al-Alwani who was arrested on suspicion of making car bombs duing a raid in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib neighborhood, Sunday June 5, 2005. According to the Iraqi army Al-Alwani was also a member of Saddam Hussein's special guard. (AP Photo/Mohammed Uraibi)
U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Chris Catalano of Union, New Jersey, left, supervises a team from the Iraqi Intervention Force while raiding a mosque in an undisclosed location in southern Baghdad, Iraq where Americans believed a top leader of the insurgency and close associated of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was hiding, Sunday, June 5, 2005. Although the insurgent leader was not found, Americans and soldiers from the Iraqi Intervention Force detained 15 people. (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)
U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Todd Sullivan of Brattleboro, Vermont inspects the hands of Iraqi men for tattoos that he thinks will identify insurgents at an undisclosed location south of Baghdad, Iraq, where Americans believed a top leader of the insurgency and close associated of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was hiding, Sunday, June 5, 2005. Although the insurgent leader was not found, Americans and soldiers from the Iraqi Intervention Force detained 15 people. (AP Photo / Jacob Silberberg)
LATIFIYAH January 2005
LATIFIYAH, Iraq (Feb. 1, 2005) – Spc. Nathan Woodruff (left), from Tucson, Ariz., digs for hidden weapons caches when a metal detector held by Sgt. Marko Palzcewski, hits something metallic. Sgt. Joe Shultz (right), a scout section leader, Sgt. 1st Class Jerry Helton, the scout platoon sergeant, and Spc. Russell Sears, from Covington, Ga., look on. The team didn?t find any caches in this spot, but another hit further up in a farmers field lead them to unearth a cache of hand grenades and mortars. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Andy Miller, 122nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment.
LATIFIYAH January 2005
LATIFIYAH January 2005
Big Dig Takes a Bite Out of the Desert (Latifiyah last updated January 2005)
By Spc. Andy Miller 122nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment
LATIFIYAH, Iraq—After several weeks of collecting and destroying weapons caches in the Latifiyah area of north Babil, Task Force 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division, got a tip about a cache in the desert. What they found buried in man-made desert berms was a series of caches that resulted in the destruction of over 300 artillery rounds, hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, over 100 grenade rounds and an assortment of other munitions and armaments including surface-to-air rockets, surface-to-surface rockets and missiles, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
“It’s mundane any more to find 1000 crates of 14.5 mm. ammunition. It’s not big deal anymore. You’ve got to go for an SA-7 [surface-to-air rocket] or something else,” Maj. Chris Wilbeck, the Task Force operations officer, said after the third day of Operation Big Dig. The operation meant a lot to the Soldiers of the Task Force, who have been in theater for 14 months, and are scheduled to redeploy early February. It’s the biggest weapons cache they’ve found during their tour, which included turns in Abu Ghraib, Fallujah and most recently Latifiyah.
“It’s been really great to end on this note,” Wilbeck said. “Unfortunately I don’t think we will be able to find everything before we leave, so we’re going to have to hand this off to the unit that relieves us, and it will give them plenty to do. I think they’ll be digging this kind of stuff for weeks. “So it’s been really good, and I think what we’re doing here has a direct impact. This is like the warehouse where people would go to, to get IEDs and explosives to use in Baghdad and elsewhere. So we’ve taken away their wholesaler,” Wilbeck continued.
Many of the armaments were found by Soldiers of the Task Force’s attached Estonian, ‘Stone’, platoon and Iraqi Army platoon. On the second day, Jan. 24, of the operation, Estonian Soldiers found one of the operations more impressive caches using metal detectors and shovels; seven of nine Frog-7b 1000 kg. warheads. They found the first two on day one.
“Wow, at first we didn’t’ know what they were. We weren’t sure if they were [missiles] or exactly what they were. It was pretty interesting,” Cpl. Chad Sowers, a Task Force radio operator who works with the Stone platoon, said of finding the Frog-7b warheads. By the second day of the operation the Task Force was finding so many caches that they hired a local Iraqi with a bucket loader to help them dig. In nine hours he had found nearly 700 cases of machine gun ammunition and over 150 spools of detonation cord. On the third day an engineer group came out with some heavy equipment. The finds continued.
“I’ve got a feeling those guys will be involved with this for at least a few more weeks after we leave,” Capt. Billy Meredith, the Task Force 2-12 Cav Company B commander said. “In addition to our taskings to help secure the area for the elections, this is our other big effort. [The operation] is denying the enemy’s ability to influence the elections by denying them the capability to build IEDs and to build [vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices] and things like that. I feel like we’ve made a sizeable dent.”
Such a dent that the Task Force’s explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) team ran out of C-4 explosives, used to destroy the caches, on the second day of the operation. It’s impressive to see the EOD team use a month’s supply of C-4 in a matter of days, Wilbeck said. “We need our own warehouse of explosives to blow up the explosives,” he said. EOD’s supply of C-4 was replenished, and the controlled explosions continued until all found caches were destroyed.
Thanks for the great ping, TexKat. Awesome pics, news, and MUCH hard work being done by our great guys. This made my day. Thanks.
An elderly woman is helped by a Hezbollah volunteer to cast her ballot in a polling station in Nabattiyeh, southern Lebanon, Sunday, June 5, 2005. Citizens who came to polling stations in southern Lebanon on Sunday expressed strong support for Hezbollah, the guerrilla group that fought Israel during an 18-year occupation and is now facing international pressure to disarm.. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)
Lebanon Voters Show Support for Hezbollah
By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer
BINT JBEIL, Lebanon - Voters walked past veiled young women handing out campaign fliers Sunday in southern Lebanon, where the front-runner was Hezbollah and the vote was seen as a referendum on whether the Syrian-backed militant group will be allowed to stay armed.
The regional balloting marked the second of four rounds of voting to be held on consecutive Sundays in the first election in three decades to be held without Syrian troops in the country.
Emboldened by the Syrian troop withdrawal in April, the opposition hopes the elections will end Damascus' control of the legislature and the campaigning was cast as a contest between pro- and anti-Syrian camps. But the vote in southern Lebanon was geared toward rejecting international pressure to disarm Hezbollah in line with a U.N. Security Council resolution, which was sponsored by the U.S. and France.
Hezbollah, labeled a terrorist organization by Washington, teamed up with its rival, the Amal movement, for the parliamentary elections in the largely Shiite Muslim south. The joint ticket was expected to easily sweep the 23 seats in that region, which borders Israel.
Voters expressed strong support for Hezbollah, which fought Israel during an 18-year occupation and is credited with forcing Israeli troops to withdraw from the region.
Outside one polling station, loudspeakers mounted on cars belted out militant songs and speeches by the group's leaders.
Amal also fought Israeli forces in the early years but the group was later overshadowed by Hezbollah, whose name means Party of God.
The balloting in the south was peaceful, but Druse supporters of opposition leader Walid Jumblatt and rival Talal Arsalan clashed in central Lebanon, where voters are to go to the polls next Sunday. Seven people were wounded in the gunfire in the mountain resort of Sofar before troops intervened and separated the two sides, the official National News Agency reported in the first major election-related violence.
In the south, Lebanese security officials said a Katyusha rocket set to be fired on Israel from a border area was dismantled by security forces late Saturday before it was launched.
In last Sunday's polls in Beirut, anti-Syrian opposition candidates took most of the capital's 19 parliamentary seats.
Hezbollah is fielding 14 candidates across Lebanon, hoping to build on the nine seats it holds in the 128-member legislature. It won one seat in Beirut.
Outside a polling station in the port city of Tyre, a picture of party leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah with a 'Yes' written on it hung near a portrait of President Bush wearing a cowboy hat and the word 'No' written on the bottom. At the entrance of Bint Jbeil, a Shiite town several miles from the Israeli border, a yellow Hezbollah banner read: "Free people make free elections."
"We should show our support for the resistance and those who were martyred for the sake of liberating this country," Kamel Hamka, 77, said. He said one of his sons was killed during a guerrilla operation against Israelis in 1986, and he sent five children to America and one to Australia to escape the Israeli occupation.
"If it weren't for the resistance and the martyrs, I wouldn't be here voting today," he said.
The area has seen occasional tension with the Jewish state since the Israeli troop withdrawal from a border security zone in southern Lebanon in 2000. Hezbollah expects strong voter support will give it greater political influence to confront international pressure to disarm now that its Syrian backers have withdrawn from the country. The group also is supported by Iran.
The elections came after last week's assassination of an anti-Syrian journalist and continuing calls by the opposition for President Emile Lahoud's resignation and amid lingering anger over the Feb. 14 assassination of Rafik Hariri.
Hariri's killing triggered mass protests at home and anger from governments abroad that ultimately drove out the Syrian army. The opposition blamed Syria and its Lebanese government allies for the killing, charges they both denied.
Lebanese were choosing from 53 candidates in the south, although six were uncontested.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who heads the Amal movement, also urged supporters to turn out in large numbers "to vote against Resolution 1559."
The U.N. resolution required Syrian troops to leave Lebanon and demanded militias surrender their weapons. The United States also has called for the group to disarm. Hezbollah has refused, however, and Lebanese authorities have rejected U.S. and U.N. demands to dismantle the party, saying it is a resistance movement, not a militia.
Syria maintained troops in Lebanon since 1976, when they were sent as peacekeepers during that country's 1975-1990 civil war. The troops remained until April, while Syria dominated Lebanon's politics.
A Lebanese boy, a supporter of the Hezbollah group, fixes glasses shaped as the Star of David onto an effigy of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice draped in an Israeli and U.S flag, in front of a symbolic ballot box, in Tyre, southern Lebanon, Saturday, June 5, 2005. Lebanese citizens who came to polling stations in southern Lebanon on Sunday expressed strong support for Hezbollah, the guerrilla group that fought Israel during an 18-year occupation and is now facing international pressure to disarm. (AP Photo/Mohammad Zaatari)
A veiled Lebanese woman casts her ballot at a polling station in Sidon, southern Lebanon. Voters in southern Lebanon were set to hand pro-Syria Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah a sweeping victory in round two of the first elections to be held since Damascus withdrew its troops from the country.(AFP/Joseph Barrak)
A Lebanese soldier guards a polling station under posters of parliamentary candidate Yassin Jaber (L), Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah (C), and parliament speaker and head of the Shiite pro-Syrian Amal movement Nabih Berri during the second round of the four-phase parliamentary elections in the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh. The pro-Syria coalition of the Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah was heading for a sweeping victory in round two of Lebanon's first elections to be held since Damascus withdrew its troops from the country.(AFP/Haitham Mussawi)
An effigy erected by Hezbollah supporters of US State Secretary Condoleezza Rice sits at the entrance of a polling station in the southern port city of Tyre during the second round of the four-phase Lebanese parliamentary elections. Voters in southern Lebanon were set to hand pro-Syria Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah a sweeping victory in round two of the first elections to be held since Damascus withdrew its troops from the country.(AFP/Haitham Mussawi)
Syria's allies set to sweep south Lebanon polls - Reuters
Lahoud rejects resignation demands
Sun., June 05, 2005
By Aluf Benn - Haaretz Correspondent
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit the region at the end of next week in an effort to further coordination of the disengagement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Rice will visit the PA on June 18 and meet with Israeli leaders the following day. Almost immediately after her visit, on June 21, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is due to meet with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
From the Middle East, Rice will fly to Europe for an international conference on Iraq and the G-8 summit, and the timing of her visit is meant in part to enable the U.S. to show its European and Arab friends at these meetings that it is actively involved in Israeli-Palestinian affairs. But the timing also suits Sharon and Abbas, as they will have their upcoming meeting to present to her as a sign of their good relations.
As a first step toward coordinating the disengagement, Israel will soon give the PA a map of all the Israeli infrastructure in Gaza and a list of all the assets that Israel will leave there following the evacuation. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz approved the map and the list yesterday, after they were first reviewed by the security services.
Russia, meanwhile, is urging that an international conference be held in September, to include senior government officials, to demonstrate that diplomatic activity is continuing after the disengagement. It has proposed inviting representatives of the Quartet (the U.S., the European Union, Russia and the United Nations), Israel, the PA, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and perhaps other states in the region as well. However, this idea might be put on hold, since the leaders of all the relevant countries may instead meet that month at the annual UN General Assembly session.
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan forces have arrested a senior Taliban commander accused of leading attacks against Afghan and U.S.-led troops based in the west of the country, a defence ministry spokesman said on Sunday.
Haji Sultan, a division commander for the Taliban, was arrested with Mullah Mohammad Rahim, another senior Taliban official, in the western province of Farah on Saturday, said the spokesman, Zahir Azimy.
"Haji Sultan was on the U.S. military black list and we handed him over to them for investigation," Azimy said.
The U.S. military confirmed Sultan's arrest, describing him as a bomb maker, but said he was seized on Thursday.
A Taliban commander, Mullah Dadullah, said by telephone from an undisclosed location Sultan had not been arrested.
Asked if Sultan's arrest might help lead authorities to the fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, Azimy said investigations would try to determine that.
U.S. and Afghan forces as well as authorities in neighbouring Pakistan have arrested hundreds of suspected Taliban and their al Qaeda allies since the Taliban were ousted from power in late 2001 by U.S.-led forces.
Taliban guerrillas and their Islamic allies have been involved in bloody violence that has gripped parts of southern and eastern Afghanistan near the rugged region with Pakistan in recent months.
U.S.-led troops toppled the hardline Taliban government after it refused to hand over al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, the architect of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Bin Laden, like Omar, remains at large.
Troops on patrol unearth gun at mosque
Iraqi soldiers find rusty but serviceable anti-aircraft gun
By Sandra Jontz, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Sunday, May 1, 2005
KARMAH, Iraq — Iraqi Security Forces, under the supervision of U.S. Marines, unearthed a rusted but serviceable anti-aircraft weapon on Saturday, buried on the grounds of a mosque in the city of Karmah......EXCERPT
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=27988&archive=true
Pope Benedict XVI gives his blessing from his studio's window overlooking St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Sunday, June 5, 2005. The Pontiff called for the release of an Italian hostage held in Afghanistan, and also for dialogue to prevail in Bolivia, which has been wracked by over two weeks of unrest. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
Pope seeks release of Italian hostage in Afghanistan
Associated Press VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI called today for the release of an Italian hostage held in Afghanistan, while that nation's foreign minister expressed optimism the woman's captivity would have a "peaceful, happy ending."
Benedict made the comments from his studio window overlooking St. Peter's Square, jammed with tens of thousands of people for his Sunday blessing. They interrupted him with applause, prompting him to tell them: "I have something else to say!"
The pontiff said he was adding his voice to that of Italian and Afghan leaders and citizens demanding freedom for Clementina Cantoni, an Italian working for CARE International who was abducted by armed men May 16 as she was being driven to her home in Kabul.
"Let the painful experience that our sister is living through stimulate the search with all means for peaceful and fraternal agreements between individuals and nations," he said.
Afghanistan's government said today it was doing all it could to free Cantoni, and more than 100 women rallied in the Afghan capital calling for her release.
"We are doing ... whatever possible to bring to an end the case peacefully and to get Clementina safe and free," Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah told reporters in Kabul. "I am optimistic that this situation will come to a peaceful, happy ending."
Cantoni, 32, had been in Afghanistan since 2002 and worked for CARE International on a project helping Afghan widows and their families.
Her kidnapping was the latest in a series of attacks targeting foreigners in Kabul, reinforcing fears that militants or criminals here are copying tactics used in Iraq. In Iraq at least eight Italians have been taken hostage, two of whom have been killed.
The rally by the women was on a dusty field in Kabul, with many participants holding pictures of Cantoni and crying. Most were widows who had benefited from Cantoni's work.
"She was here to help the widows and orphans, she is our guest," said one widow, Khori Gul. "For the sake of these ... widows, we seek mercy for her and her release."
Afghan women hold a demonstration at a CARE International food distribution center in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, June 5, 2005 for the release of Italian aid worker Clementina Cantoni who was kidnapped on May 16 in Kabul. Hundreds widows attending the protest were from around 10,000 benefited by CARE's widow emergency feeding program coordinated by Cantoni. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
Two Fort Bragg Soldiers Killed In Afghanistan
POSTED: 3:55 pm EDT June 5, 2005
FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- An attack in Afghanistan killed two Special Forces soldiers from Fort Bragg.
Staff Sgt. Leroy Alexander and Captain Charles Robinson died Friday after a bomb exploded near their vehicle.
Both were assigned to the Seventh Special Forces Group.
Alexander, 27, was from Virginia, and Robinson, 29, was from New Jersey.
Both are survived by a wife.
Jun. 5, 2005
A Pakistani court sentenced a terrorist to death on Saturday for masterminding two suicide attacks on minority Shi''ite Muslims that killed at least 45 people, lawyers said. The convict, Gul Hasan, belonged to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an underground banned group that has ties with the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda linked terrorists. Judge Haq Nawaz of an anti-terrorism court said Hasan was found guilty of masterminding attacks on two Shi''ite mosques in Karachi in May last year, in which around 127 people were also injured. "We are satisfied with the verdict and the conviction was based on the confession made by the convict," said Mazhar Qayyum, a public prosecutor.
Defence lawyer Mushtaq Ahmad said his client was innocent. "We are going to appeal against the verdict in high court within a week," he said. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is one of Pakistan's most feared teoororist groups and police have blamed it for much of the sectarian bloodletting in the country. It has also been implicated in attacks on Western targets in Karachi, including the murder of US reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, and in two attempts to kill President Pervez Musharraf. Investigators also suspect that the group was behind suicide attacks in the capital Islamabad and Karachi last month in which at least 24 people died, most of them Shi''ites. More than 100 people have been killed in tit-for-tat attacks by majority Sunni and minority Shi''ite militants in the past year. Most of the sectarian victims have been Shi''ite Muslims, who account for about 15 per cent of a Pakistan's predominantly Sunni population of 150 million.
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