Pakistan: Suspects in murder of Christian politician who opposed blasphemy law could go free due to jihad threats

How can the murderers of Shahbaz Bhatti be punished when so many people in Pakistan sympathize more with them than with their victim, and believe that the Christians who have been hounded and persecuted under that country’s blasphemy laws had it coming and deserved what they got?

More on this story. “Islamic Extremist Threats in Pakistan Could Quash Prosecution of Bhatti Murder,” by Jeremy Reynalds for ASSIST News Service, February 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

LAHORE, PAKISTAN (ANS)

Suspects in the murder of Pakistan’s first Christian cabinet minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, could walk free due to intimidation tactics by Islamic extremists, Christians fear.

According to a story by Morning Star News, the suspects have confessed, according to Dr. Paul Bhatti, brother of former Minister for Minority Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti, who was gunned down on March 2 2011.

However, prosecution will be difficult after death threats from Islamic extremists forced Paul Bhatti to flee the country, and banned extremist groups are demanding the release of the suspects for progress in talks with government officials.

Paul Bhatti took responsibility for becoming the complainant in the case when the government’s prosecution slowed to a standstill, but he has left the country due to threats on his life by the Pakistani Taliban and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) terrorist organizations.

“I’ve been constantly threatened to withdraw the case, and just recently I received a letter from the Pakistani Taliban and LeJ warning me to stop pursuing the case, or else they will kill me,” Bhatti told Morning Star News by phone from Italy.

He added, “I informed the government and other concerned quarters about these threats, but I’m yet to hear something from their side.”

Bhatti has not given up on prosecuting, but Sub-Inspector Riaz Gondal, the investigating officer in the case, admitted that the suspects and their handlers did pose a serious threat to the murder victim’s brother.

“Indeed it is a serious matter perhaps this is why they hadn’t been pursuing the case,” he said, noting that Bhatti’s absence from hearings and reduced contact with investigators would impair prosecution. “We did our job and arrested the accused. It’s now up to the court to punish them. But if the complainant does not show up at the hearings, there’s little hope for the killers to be convicted.”

Bhatti said that the public prosecutor assigned by the Punjab government had refused to pursue the murder case in the Rawalpindi anti-terrorism court.

“I then hired a lawyer on my own, although it was the responsibility of the Punjab government,” he said.

Asked why the government was not the complainant in the murder case of its cabinet minister instead of the victim’s brother, especially with the case carrying such high risks, Gondal said, “I was assigned the investigation some months ago, so I can’t really say why Shahbaz Bhatti’s brother became the complainant in the case. As for the government’s role in this matter, the police are doing their job, and arrests of the accused are a testimony of their efforts.”

Morning Star News said Gondal denied receiving any information regarding the threats to Paul Bhatti.

Prisoner Release

Complicating the case is the possibility that the suspects could be released as part of an agreement for government talks with banned Muslim extremists groups.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has reportedly demanded the release of Bhatti’s alleged assassins along with other imprisoned terrorists as a pre-condition for progress in “peace talks” with the government.

Bhatti said that it was the government’s responsibility to keep the murderers of a sitting cabinet minister from walking free.

“The men themselves confessed to killing my brother,” Morning Star News reported he said. “I’m certain that they are the real culprits, because the Taliban are demanding their release. It would be very unjust if the government submits to the Taliban demand.”

Almost three years have passed since Bhatti’s murder, but the trial has barely begun. Islamabad police believe the latest threatening letters were sent to pressure Bhatti following the arrest of four Islamic extremists accused of killing his brother Omar Abdullah, Hammad Adil, Abdul Sattar and one identified only as Tanveer, who all belong to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Adil had already been detained for planning attacks on key installations in Islamabad; a vehicle laden with 120 kilograms of explosives was recovered from his residence.

Adil and Abdullah reportedly confessed to killing Bhatti and named the two accomplices, who were detained shortly afterwards.

In June 2011, then-Islamabad Senior Superintendent of Police Tahir Alam submitted a joint investigation report to the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Minorities saying that police had decided to shelve the Bhatti murder case as investigators could not find any leads.

The case was reopened on Sept. 30, 2013, at the request of Capital Police, and a joint investigation team was formed following the arrest of Adil.

Gondal, the investigator and officer in charge of the Sabzi Mandi Police Station, said police have filed charge sheets against Adil and Abdullah and sent them to jail on judicial remand. The other two suspects will also be formally charged soon, he added.

Gondal said he could not comment on chances of the suspects walking free as a result of a deal between the government and Taliban.
“I can’t comment on this issue, because it’s for the government to decide,” he said. “But I hope they know how dangerous these men are.”

The right-wing government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is holding “peace talks” with the Taliban. Among the preconditions set by the terrorists for a “meaningful outcome of the talks” is the release of Pakistani and foreign terrorists languishing in Pakistani jails.

Most political analysts believe that the government might release some Taliban prisoners as a confidence-building measure with the Taliban.

Prominent human rights activist Asma Jahangir said that if the government caved in to the Taliban demand and released all terrorists affiliated with the group, then it might as well set free all other prisoners languishing in jails across the country.

“The Taliban have killed thousands of innocent people and members of security forces in the last seven years,” Jahangir said. “How can the government even think of negotiating with such barbarians? The government must not accept the Taliban’s demand for release of hard-core militants, as the peace talks may turn out to be a Taliban ploy to get their friends released from prisons.”

An Interior Ministry senior official refused to comment on the eventuality of any person involved in Bhatti’s murder being released as part of a deal between the government and terrorists.

“The government has not taken any such decision as yet, but the final authority rests with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,” he said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to media, he told Morning Star News that officials had received Paul Bhatti’s application for provision of security due to Taliban threats to him.

“We are looking into the matter,” the official said. “Almost every other important person is facing high risk, but it is not possible for us to provide extensive security cover to everyone given our limited resources.”

Lack of progress in the case at one time led Bhatti to lose hope that the killers would ever be brought to justice, said the former minister for national harmony and minority affairs, appointed to replace his brother.

“However, when the police announced that they had the assassins in its custody and shared the investigation details with us, I thought that perhaps my brother’s killers would be punished for their crime,” he said. “But there has been little progress over all.”

Morning Star News said he doesn’t plan to remain in Italy.

“I know we are potential targets, but we will not give up,” he said. “Those threatening us are the same people who are responsible for the murders of my brother and countless other innocent people in Pakistan.”

He said that after the murder of his brother, he left his medical practice in Italy and returned to Pakistan to continue Shahbaz’s mission. He was selected as chairman of his brother’s party, the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, and was accommodated in the federal cabinet in place of the late minister.

Since the Pakistan Peoples Party lost power last year, however, risks have increased, Bhatti said.

Two months before Shahbaz Bhatti was killed, Punjab Gov. Salmaan Taseer, a Muslim, was assassinated on Jan. 4 2011.

Morning Star News said Al Qaeda-linked militants targeted both men for their criticism of the country’s blasphemy laws and for their defense of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother sentenced to death for allegedly blaspheming Islam’s prophet. She has been waiting for three years to have her appeal heard.

This blog is sponsored by: http://visitwebpages.info/paypalchecks

Egypt: Christian Syrian family slaughtered

A Christian Syrian family of four living in Alexandria, Egypt, was barbarically stabbed to death Sunday in their home in al-Ibrahamya neighborhood, Arabic media are reporting.

The family consisted of a father, 44, his wife, 35, their 6-year-old son, Michael, and the wife’s brother.

After the murders, the house, where the family had been living for years, was set on fire by the murderers in an attempt to hide the crime but was put out by authorities.

All four bodies were found bearing many stab wounds and other signs of extreme violence.

The wife and child had their throats slit, while the father appeared to have been stabbed to death, with stab wounds all over his body.

The crime was not motivated by theft, as the home was not robbed, and preliminary reports say the family was slaughtered for being supporters of the Bashar Assad government in Syria.

The wife was said to be a vocal supporter, often arguing politics.

Islamists all around the Middle East and especially in Egypt strongly oppose and are supporting a jihad against the moderate Assad government in an attempt to oust it and set up a Sharia state in Syria.

Most religious minorities, including Christians, are supportive of the secular Assad regime, having seen the great violence done against fellow Christians by the Islamic rebels who deem them “infidels.”

This blog is sponsored by: http://visitwebpages.info/paypalchecks

Nigeria: Jihad mass murder death toll at Christian village reaches 106

The unimaginable horror of this is compounded by the world’s indifference. The few who dare to call attention to jihad attacks like this one are vilified, mocked, shunned, ridiculed, and defamed, even as such attacks multiply and the body count mounts ever higher. Right now Western governments have apparently decided that jihad attacks like this one can’t happen in their countries, and so don’t matter, and that when they take place in faraway lands such as Nigeria, they need not disturb the comforting fictions about Islam’s jihad doctrine that form the cornerstone of so much of their domestic and foreign policy.

An update on this story. “Over 100 killed in Islamist attack in northern Nigeria,” from AFP, February 16:

Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) – Suspected Boko Haram Islamists killed more than 100 people in an attack on a village in Nigeria, a local senator said on Sunday.

The attackers stormed the village in Nigeria’s restive northeastern Borno state on Saturday, slaughtering scores of civilians and sending many others fleeing.

“A hundred and six people, including an old woman, have been killed by the attackers, suspected to be Boko Haram gunmen,” senator Ali Ndume told AFP.

“Sixty of the dead have been buried while the rest are awaiting burial,” he said, adding the attacks in the area were becoming “deadlier and more frequent by the day.”

The raid took place on Saturday in the mostly Christian village of Izghe in Borno, which has been under emergency rule since May last year in a bid to stop an Islamist rebellion that has claimed thousands of lives since 2009.

A local farmer who escaped by scaling the fence of his house and crawling on his belly for 40 minutes said the attackers had gone door-to-door looking for those hiding in their houses.

“The attackers came around 9:30 pm (20.30 GMT) in six trucks and some motorcycles. They were dressed in military uniform,” Barnabas Idi said. “They asked men to assemble at a place, and began hacking and slaughtering them.”

There were no security forces in the town at the time of the attack, he said.

The head of the local government in the area, Maina Ularamu, earlier told AFP: “From the latest information I have gathered, more than 60 people have been killed.”

“We suspect that the gunmen were members of Boko Haram. They have taken over the village,” said Ularamu.

“They looted businesses and food stores and loaded all their spoils into vehicles owned by residents and fled into the bush,” he added.

The official was speaking from Abuja and said he was preparing to return to Maiduguri, the state capital, to deal with the fallout of the attack.

Hundreds of villagers in Borno had already fled to Maiduguri after Boko Haram militants last week killed 43 people in two separate attacks.

The militant sect has said it is fighting to create a strict Islamic state in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north.

The southern half of the oil-rich country, Africa’s most populous, is mainly Christian.

Gunmen also attacked a fishing village on Lake Chad on Saturday, killing an unspecified number of residents.

A survivor said several people had drowned in the lake while trying to escape the gunmen.

Military spokesman Mohammed Dole confirmed the attack but declined to comment further saying the area fell under the jurisdiction of a multinational task force comprising troops from Nigeria, Niger and Chad.

Boko Haram militants have carried out frequent attacks in both cities and remote areas of the northeast, despite a military operation launched when emergency rule was declared….

Source: Jihadwatch
This blog is sponsored by: http://8070132083.acnshop.eu

Interfaith outreach in Malaysia: Muslims break crosses, desecrate graves in Christian cemetery

These vandals were just imitating Jesus, who according to Islamic tradition will return at the end of the world, at which time he “will fight for the cause of Islam. He will break the cross, kill pigs, and abolish the poll tax. Allah will destroy all religions except Islam” (Sunan Abu Dawud 27:4310).

Interfaith dialogue in modern, moderate Malaysia: “Unknown vandals desecrate eight graves in a Christian cemetery in Kuantan,” from Asia News, February 7 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Kuala Lumpur (AsiaNews) – Person or persons unknown desecrated eight gravestones in a Christian cemetery in Tanjung Api, near Kuantan, capital of Kuantan District, in Malaysia’s Pahang State.

The attack was discovered this morning, when a cemetery employee found some damaged graves (pictured).

It is likely to fuel sectarian tensions in the Asian country, where Catholics and Muslims are already at loggerheads over the use of the word Allah for the Christian God, something that is currently before the courts.

Local witnesses said that some gravestones were completely smashed, and some crosses were broken. Flowerpots and other stone markers were also broken. It seems that perpetrators used a heavy tool to do the damage.

A cemetery administrator, who reported the incident to the police, now hopes the vandals will be brought to justice.

Tanjung Api cemetery covers an area of ​​1.5 acres state land and has been used by 36 Christian communities in Kuantan since 1997.

Although there is no actual evidence, sources told AsiaNews that the incident is probably linked to anti-Church banners and firebombs in late January.

“The area is accessible to everyone, all day, through a small door,” said Kuantan Tanjung Api Christian Cemetery Committee chairperson Datuk Jack How. “In all these years, we have never had any problems of this kind. Our guess is this occurred recently.”

The cemetery attack is the latest in a series of incidents against the Catholic community in Malaysia, where religious tensions have been on the rise.

Tensions are due to a confrontation between a Catholic weekly, the Malaysia Herald, its director Fr Andrew Lawrence, and the government over the use of the word Allah by non-Muslims.

In October, the Court of Appeal ruled that the Catholic weekly could not use the word Allah for the Christian God. The paper’s director appealed the decision, and a hearing is scheduled for 5 March.

“The priority today is to contain tensions,” said local senior Church leaders, who asked to remain anonymous. Things should become calm and quiet again, they insisted. “There is still much to do,” they added, given how delicate the situation is.

On the one hand, the goal is to protect the rights of the minority in court; on the other hand, everyone wants peaceful coexistence between the country’s various ethnic groups.

The nation of over 28 million people has a Muslim majority (60 per cent). Christians are the third largest religious group after Buddhists, with more than 2.6 million members

A Malay-Latin dictionary published 400 years ago shows that the term ‘Allah’ was used in the local language to refer to the Biblical God centuries ago.

This blog is powered by: http://visitwebpages.info/paypalchecks

Pakistan: Jihadis threaten to kill lawyer, witness in trial of murderers of Christian official who opposed blasphemy law

They support those who murdered Shahbaz Bhatti and believe that they should go free. He was, after all, an Infidel who was interfering with the implementation of Sharia blasphemy laws in Pakistan. As far as they are concerned, he deserved what he got.
“Extremist threats hamper Shahbaz Bhatti’s murder trial,” from AFP, February 8 (thanks to Lookmann):
ISLAMABAD: Extremist threats have hampered the murder trial of Pakistan’s former minority affairs minister Shahbaz Bhatti, who was gunned down in Islamabad in March 2011, the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA) said Saturday.
Shahbaz Bhatti, a Catholic, had been a vocal opponent of Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law.
Blasphemy is an extremely sensitive issue in a country where 97 per cent of the population is Muslim and can carry the death penalty.

This blog is powered by: http://visitwebpages.info/paypalchecks

Christian Arab IDF soldier: I would sacrifice my life for the sake of the State of Israel

Mona Liza Abdo, an Israeli-Arab soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, said she wasn’t required to enlist in the Israeli army, but her determination to protect Israel motivated her to volunteer, according to a profile and accompanying video on the IDF’s blog.

The IDF said, “As a fighter on Israel’s southern border, she rose through the ranks to become a commander, teaching soldiers how to combat terrorism and other threats. Just over a month ago, she honorably completed three years of service – one more than the required number for Israeli women.”

In an exit interview with Abdo, who is an Arab Christian from Haifa, the soldier said she would sacrifice her life for Israel.

“I keep the country of Israel safe, not only for the Jews but for the Arabs, too. And I would sacrifice my life for the sake of the State of Israel and all its citizens,” Abdo said.

“I joined the IDF because I am an inseparable part of Israel. I came to serve my country and my home,” she said. “My job as a commander in the IDF is to prevent terrorist attacks, smuggling operations and illegal entry into the country. I think if I prevent drugs entering the country, I not only protect the Jewish people but the arabs as well.”

Abdo’s mother, also interviewed in the clip, said she was overjoyed when her daughter told her that she wanted to enlist, which she described as a “mature decision.”

“This is our country and our home. Here we will live and here we will die. The roots of our fathers and our children are here,” her mother said.

This blog is powered by: http://visitwebpages.info/paypalchecks