ISLAMABAD: Federal Information Minister, Sherry Rahman has resigned from her post, as confirmed by different sources.
Geo News anchor, Hamid Mir said that almost all sources have confirmed the resignation of Federal Information Minister, Sherry Rahman. Hamid Mir said that Sherry Rahman last night had sent her resignation to the prime minister, who expressed his surprise over it. Sherry said that she wouldn’t withdraw her resignation until the crackdown decision was taken back.
Sherry Rahman said that the prime minister and she too were bypassed on the Geo News matter, as the order to Pemra chairman was directly issued from the President House. Hamid Mir reported that President Zardari told Sherry on her resignation, “You have left me in difficult times, which Sherry replied that she has resigned on principle that of Benazir.”
Sherry Rahman said that when Geo News was banned earlier, then she herself had accompanied Mohtarma visiting Geo News and, while condemning the incident, it was promised that Geo News would not be gagged in future and now, with which face she would go to the newsmen, she enquired.
On the other hand, Prime Minister Gilani also politely registered his protest with President Zardari on the Geo News ban and said that the crackdown decision should be taken back.
ISLAMABAD: It has been learned that cable operators across the country blocked the transmission of Geo News on the directive of President Asif Ali Zardari.
President Zardari has sent messages to Geo TV administration in which he has said that if Geo has recovered from the courts the losses incurred following the ban on the channel in former president Pervez Musharraf’s rule then it should stop forthwith the coverage of lawyers movement for the restoration of November 3, 2007 judiciary.
The reason why President Asif Ali Zardari has taken the step is that Geo TV is reminding the President his past promises and commitments he had made to the nation and what Shaheed Benazir Bhutto had said about the freedom of expression, restoration of judiciary and Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
It is pertinent to mention that Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto strongly condemned the blocking of Geo news in 2007 during the tenure of former President Pervez Musharraf. She also assured the PPP would not take any such decision if it comes in power corridors.
The Jang Group had earlier faced victimisation during Nawaz Sharif’s government before Musharraf regime banned the Geo TV Network. The victimisation resulted in a two-page spread of Pakistan’s number one Urdu newspaper Daily Jang.
Geo TV does not further agenda or manifesto of any political party. It aims at promoting saner voices, supporting an independent judiciary and rule of law in the country.
Earlier, transmission of Geo News was blocked in some parts of Karachi, Hyderabad, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Quetta, Multan, Rawlakot, Muzaffarabad, Deepalpur, Sargodha and Dera Murad Jamali.
The concerned officials have directed the cable operators to place Geo News channel at the tail end, making it difficult for the viewers to watch the channel.
Viewers of Geo News have started making phone calls to Geo’s office, trying to find out reasons for not receiving the transmission.
General Secretary Pakistan Muslim League-Q Mushahid Hussain said Geo News is being punished for airing the truth.
Talking to Geo News, he said the government should not repeat mistakes made in the past.
PML-N Chief Nawaz Sharif, Tehreek-i-Insaf Chief Imran khan and Senator Babar Ghauri condemned the blocking of Geo News.
Reporters Without Borders has also condemned the action which, it said, has brought back memories of military rule in the country.
Hamid Mir said the government had a plan to block the transmission of three channels including Geo News.
The threat of blocking the channel loomed during the past days and now the action has finally been taken.
“Enraged lawyers tore up Dr. Afgan’s clothes and attacked him by throwing stones and shoes.
They also shaterred the windows of the ambulance in which Dr. Afgan was being taken away from the site of the incident.
Earleri, a large number of lawyers laid a siege around the office of Dr. Afgan’s lawyer when he came to visit him.
The police present at the scene failed to create a safe passage for Dr. Afgan and he remained confined in the office for about three hours.”
http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=42952
Regarding party alliances and promises, AAZ has his
own ideas:
“According to sources present on the occasion, Zardari took Aitzaz to task for constantly threatening to launch a long march to force parliament to restore Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and the other deposed judges. Zardari advised Aitzaz to go ahead with his long march if he was so keen on it instead of constantly threatening the PPP about it. He told Aitzaz that he was wrong to think that the lawyers movement had forced General Pervez Musharraf to take off his uniform or hold the elections. He said that honour belonged to Benazir Bhutto who had compelled Musharraf to do so and paid for it with her life. He said the entire credit for restoration of democracy went to Ms Bhutto and Aitzaz and the judges and lawyers could not rob her of her victory. Zardari also reminded Aitzaz that while he was incarcerated for eight long years none of these heroic judges had given him justice, even when he had asked for one day’s reprieve to attend a funeral of a close relative. Zardari is reported to have said that Justice Chayhad politicised himself overtly and ruined his case as an advocate for an independent judiciary. He also cited other instances when some of these judges had not conducted themselves with any degree of integrity or independence in the past. Aitzaz tried a feeble defence but could not deflect Zardari’s irritation. “I thought Aitzaz would get up and leave but he just sat there,” said the source. staff report”
No wonder Aitzaz Ehsan resigned. I just hope that lawyers don’t stop their agitation and continue to show their true (read: criminal) colors.
(CBS) Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, leads a country in crisis ten days after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Pakistan is the only Islamic country with nuclear bombs, a place where the influence of the Taliban and al Qaeda is growing.
The Bush administration hopes Musharraf can save his country, but he’s the man many Pakistanis blame for its crisis. Was he responsible for the assassination, as many Pakistanis believe? Did his government fail to provide adequate protection? Or did Benazir Bhutto take unnecessary risks?
Lara Logan asked these questions of President Musharraf on Saturday in Islamabad, his first interview since the Bhutto assassination.
“I knew that she’s under threat. She herself knew that. I told her personally,” Musharraf says.
“So it was just a matter of time, do you think?” Logan asks.
“It’s your luck,” Musharraf replies. “There’s no real protection against a suicide bomber really.”
Benazir Bhutto’s luck ran out on December 27th. She was leaving a campaign rally in her bid to become prime minister for the third time. Bhutto was waving and smiling from her vehicle as excited supporters swarmed around her.
Gunshots rang out. Then, moments later, a suicide bomber blew himself up. In less than two hours, the announcement came that Bhutto was dead.
“That came as an utter shock. It came as an utter shock,” Musharraf remembers.
Asked what the first thing was that went through his mind when he heard the news, Musharraf tells Logan, “Well, I knew there was going to be a disturbance in the country and I immediately told the army commander and told everyone to alert everyone, and we must take immediate measures to control any kind of agitation, any kind of emotional outburst.”
The moment word of Bhutto’s death hit the streets, riots broke out; much of the rage was directed at President Musharraf, her main political rival.
“By the time of her assassination, how would you describe the nature of your relationship with her?” Logan asks.
“Up and down. It wasn’t constant - I had asked her not to come before the election, and that we will arrange - then she could come after the election, which she agreed. She had agreed. But then she decided to come all of a sudden. Now that changed a little. It upset me a little,” Musharraf says.
“Were you feeling that she was not sticking to her agreements with you, that she wasn’t keeping her word?” Logan asks.
“Well, to an extent yes. She used to change the goalposts frequently, depending on the ups and downs here in the country,” Musharraf replies.
“It sounds like she was annoying you,” Logan remarks.
“On many occasions,” Musharraf admits. “But on many other occasions she was positive.”
“Did you like her?” Logan asks.
“I think in such a situation it’s not your personal like and dislikes. It’s more for the nation that I thought one has to interact with her,” Musharraf says.
“When I hear words like that, you know, ‘One has to interact with her for the sake of the nation,’ sounds to me like you didn’t like her very much,” Logan remarks.
“No I wouldn’t say I didn’t like her - well, I like or dislike, I didn’t have any kind of personal friendship with her,” Musharraf says.
The president was upset with Bhutto last October, when, in spite of warnings, she went ahead with a rally in Karachi on her return from self-imposed exile in Dubai. Her convoy was attacked, with two blasts killing close to 150 people.
“Now, in Karachi we knew from Sheikh Mohammad of Dubai, I mean, I got information, intelligence from him. We had our own intelligence. He sent intelligence that there are suicide bombers there targeting her. We told her this,” Musharraf explains. “And she knew it. We told her. Don’t do it!”
“And 145 people died,” Logan remarks.
“We offered. We said that we can give you a helicopter,” Musharraf says. “But she decided to go in that procession. That’s what happened.”
Asked if he thinks that was a mistake, Musharraf tells Logan, “Yes, indeed. Absolutely.”
(CBS) Musharraf also thinks Bhutto made a mistake by going to the area where she was killed, where a former prime minister had previously been assassinated. And it wasn’t the first time Bhutto had tried to hold a rally there.
“We again had intelligence that this is a dangerous place and there’s a likelihood of a suicide attempt. We asked her not to go,” Musharraf says. “She insisted she will go. We stopped her. And we got such a poor - flak - we got flak from all over the world, from media, from Western media.”
“From the U.S.?” Logan asks.
“From everywhere,” Musharraf explains.
The night of the assassination, Musharraf believes Bhutto broke a basic rule of security in a crowded charged political rally: to be particularly careful when leaving.
“She should have just gone and moved fast, gone and waved, yes. But if you’re standing and — because you are vulnerable. You’re vulnerable and people are charging,” Musharraf says. “And all the film that you see, people are charging. Now, when people are there by the hundreds swarming around you, this man is one of them. Who can check these people at that stage?”
“And the mistake she made, if I understand you correctly, was stopping?” Logan asks.
“Yes. But then the mistake was not that,” Musharraf says. “I mean, God was kind — she went into the car in spite of the fact that she was waving and all that. She did go into the car. Now is the point. Why did she stand outside the car?”
“Why did she stand up in the hatch?” Logan asks.
“Entirely. Who’s to blame?” Musharraf replies.
Asked who is to blame, Musharraf says, “Only she.”
“So Benazir Bhutto, in your words, should bear some responsibility for what took place for her own death?” Logan asks.
“For standing up outside the car, I think it was she to blame alone. Nobody else. Responsibility is hers,” Musharraf says.
“Don’t you think it will make her supporters crazy to hear you say that?” Logan asks.
“Well, I don’t think so. I mean, that’s the fact. She shouldn’t have stood up,” Musharraf says.
“Just so I’m clear, even with the benefit of hindsight, you feel that your government, you and your government, did everything possible to give Benazir Bhutto the security she needed?” Logan asks.
“Yes, absolutely,” Musharraf says. “She had the threat. So she was given more security than any other person.”
Musharraf conceded that Bhutto’s return was a bitter pill to swallow. It was part of a deal engineered by the Bush administration after a year of political unrest and extremist violence in Pakistan.
“There was a year of secret negotiations; the United States administration has made their views very clear. President Bush endorsed Bhutto’s return, Condoleezza Rice, they had top State Department officials meeting with her. You yourself went to Dubai and met with her twice,” Logan says.
“Well, yes. All this was going - you seem to be well-informed. Very good. Yes it was happening, I agree,” Musharraf acknowledges.
“One of the reasons Benazir Bhutto had such popularity amongst top U.S. officials is that she cast herself as the person who would take action against al Qaeda. Who would go into the tribal areas. Who would get Bin Laden. Who would do all the things that she said you were not doing,” Logan says.
“No. Now, again, these are misperceptions of American thinking. All American media, some officials who don’t know Pakistan,” Musharraf responds.
“So what are you doing to find Osama bin Laden? What is Pakistan doing? What end are you actually still today - seven years - under you…,” Logan asks.
“We are…fighting terrorism. And we are fighting extremism,” Musharraf says.
“But the question is really within that fight against extremism, what are you doing - if you like - to find Osama Bin Laden?” Logan asks. “That’s what Americans want to know.”
“Okay. We are fighting first of all al Qaeda. Let’s take al Qaeda. We have arrested or eliminated about 700 al Qaeda leaders. Only Pakistan has done it. And lately also whoever has been killed or arrested, I challenge — who else, which other country has done this?” Musharraf asks.
(CBS) “Well, which other country has Osama bin Laden?” Logan replies.
“No, I challenge– I don’t accept that at all. There is no proof whatsoever that he is here in Pakistan,” Musharraf says.
“But are you looking for him?” Logan asks.
“No, again, the same answer,” Musharraf says. “We are not particularly looking for him but we are operating against terrorists and al Qaeda and militant Taliban. And in the process, obviously, it is combined, maybe we are looking for him also. Yes. If he’s here?”
Musharraf was quick to blame Bhutto’s assassination on al Qaeda, particularly a local extremist named Beitullah Mehsud, who operates out of Pakistan’s lawless tribal region where both al Qaeda and the Taliban enjoy widespread support.
“Point two percent of our population is in South Waziristan and North Waziristan. Point two percent,” Musharraf says.
“Well, that point two percent has be able to cause a lot of trouble,” Logan remarks.
“Yes. We must not say that Taliban are in Pakistan. Pakistan, this is a frontier region. Two tribal agencies of Pakistan,” Musharraf says.
“It’s still inside Pakistan. Any way you look at it,” Logan points out.
“But it’s a small part the population and it is this population where they hide and they get support,” Musharraf says.
“But they regrouped under…,” Logan says.
“Yes, indeed,” Musharraf says.
“…your watch?” Logan says.
“No, they regrouped because — not under us. Because of Afghanistan. Okay?” Musharraf says.
“But under your term as president,” Logan remarks.
“Yes. Yes, indeed,” Musharraf acknowledges.
“They have regrouped and they are stronger than ever,” Logan says.
“Well, Taliban. Yes. They may be. They may be getting stronger. I can’t say for sure,” Musharraf says.
Asked if the U.S. shares any of the blame in this, Musharraf says, “Yes, of course. I mean everyone, the whole coalition should share the blame for not succeeding.”
Of all the issues 60 Minutes discussed with Musharraf, the one that seemed to affect him the most personally, was about accusations that he may somehow have been involved in Bhutto’s death.
“There have been suggestions among certain quarters, particularly amongst Benazir Bhutto’s supporters, that you may have had a hand in her killing,” Logan says.
“This is unfortunately a very baseless allegation. Nobody has a right to blame anyone for killing anyone unless they have the proof. I’ve lived in a family which believes in values - it believes in certain principles. It stands for character. And I stand for that,” Musharraf says. “Why would I be informing her about all these intelligence reports that we have against her, the threat to her? Why would I be doing that? Why would I be concerned about telling her all this? ‘Don’t go there, don’t do this, don’t do that.’ So these are all indicators. I can’t prove it legally, I can’t prove my innocence legally. But I can prove it only through what I stand for as a person.”
Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan had a mad recklessness about it which give today’s events a horrible inevitability. As I always say when I’m asked about her, she was my next-door neighbor for a while - which affects a kind of intimacy, though in fact I knew her only for sidewalk pleasantries. She was beautiful and charming and sophisticated and smart and modern, and everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be - though in practice, as Pakistan’s Prime Minister, she was just another grubby wardheeler from one of the world’s most corrupt political classes.
Since her last spell in power, Pakistan has changed, profoundly. Its sovereignty is meaningless in increasingly significant chunks of its territory, and, within the portions Musharraf is just about holding together, to an ever more radicalized generation of young Muslim men Miss Bhutto was entirely unacceptable as the leader of their nation. “Everyone’s an expert on Pakistan, a faraway country of which we know everything,” I wrote last month. “It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate.” The State Department geniuses thought they had it all figured out. They’d arranged a shotgun marriage between the Bhutto and Sharif factions as a “united” “democratic” “movement” and were pushing Musharraf to reach a deal with them. That’s what diplomats do: They find guys in suits and get ‘em round a table. But none of those representatives represents the rapidly evolving reality of Pakistan. Miss Bhutto could never have been a viable leader of a post-Musharraf settlement, and the delusion that she could have been sent her to her death. Earlier this year, I had an argument with an old (infidel) boyfriend of Benazir’s, who swatted my concerns aside with the sweeping claim that “the whole of the western world” was behind her. On the streets of Islamabad, that and a dime’ll get you a cup of coffee.
As I said, she was everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be. We should be modest enough to acknowledge when reality conflicts with our illusions. Rest in peace, Benazir.
Bhutto Assassination Video - Here are pictures and video clips of the assassination of Pakistani presidential candidate Benazir Bhutto, killed by an Al-Qaeda backed gunman who then blew himself up in an explosion that killed twenty Bhutto supporters.
Security forces were on high alert after a warning from Pakistan’s Interior Ministry that Al-Qaeda had targeted multiple politicians and judges, but were unable to prevent the Benazir Bhutto assassination seen in video below.
The attacker struck just minutes after Bhutto addressed thousands of supporters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, 8 miles south of Islamabad. She was shot in the neck and chest by the attacker, who then blew himself up, said Rehman Malik, Bhutto’s security adviser.
Sardar Qamar Hayyat, a leader from Bhutto’s party, said he was standing about 10 yard away from her vehicle at the time of the attack.
“She was inside the vehicle and was coming out from the gate after addressing the rally when some of the youths started chanting slogans in her favor. Then I saw a smiling Bhutto emerging from the vehicle’s roof and responding to their slogans,” he said.
“Then I saw a thin, young man jumping toward her vehicle from the back and opening fire. Moments later, I saw her speeding vehicle going away,” he added.
Bhutto was rushed to the hospital and taken into emergency surgery. She died about an hour after the attack.
A doctor on the team that treated her said she had a bullet in the back of the neck that damaged her spinal cord before exiting from the side of her head. Another bullet pierced the back of her shoulder and came out through her chest.
She was given open heart massage, but the main cause of death was damage to her spinal cord, he said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the death Thursday of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan.
The decision to kill Bhutto, who was the leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), was made by al-Qaeda No. 2, the Egyptian doctor, Ayman al-Zawahiri in October.
Death squads were allegedly constituted for the mission and ultimately one cell comprising a defunct Lashkar-i-Jhangvi’s Punjabi volunteer succeeded in killing Bhutto.
Bhutto is seen in this video addressing a pre-election rally on Thursday in the garrison town of Rawalpindi just moments before the assassination and the bomb went off.
Bhutto had come to Rawalpindi in Pakistan’s volatile North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in a campaign stop where she had talked about a war against terrorism and al-Qaeda.Video of Bhutto Assassination
From Spanish news coverage. The Bhutto assassination happens just after her vehicle goes past a couple of trees about two minutes in, then all hell breaks loose.Bhutto Assassination Video - Raw footage just after blast
U.S. officials issued a strangely tepid response to Bhutto’s assassination.“Certainly, we condemn the attack on this rally. It demonstrates that there are still those in Pakistan who want to subvert reconciliation and efforts to advance democracy,” said deputy U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey.
Meanwhile, riots broke out across Pakistan as Bhutto’s supporters accused US ally Musharraf of complicity in her death.
The Bush administration hopes Musharraf can save his country, but he’s the man many Pakistanis blame for its crisis. Was he responsible for the assassination, as many Pakistanis believe? Did his government fail to provide adequate protection? Or did Benazir Bhutto take unnecessary risks?
