Delhi High Court blast: Man with briefcase seen outside court moments before blast

Source:ET

NEW DELHI: "One person clad in a white shirt came with a briefcase and stood in the queue after which a bomb exploded within seconds."

This is what Mahender, an eye-witness who had come to the High Court for a hearing, claimed after a powerful bomb exploded outside the Delhi High Court in which nine people were killed and 47 injured.

The explosive device was suspected to have been kept in a briefcase outside the High Court.

"People were standing in the line to get their passes to enter the court premises. I did not know the process to get into the complex as this is the first time I was coming for a hearing at the High Court," he said.

"When I was standing in the line along with my friend, one person came in a white shirt with a briefcase in his hand and within seconds there was a blast. I could not see anything," Mahender said.

He said he sat on the floor after the blast took place only to see the person who was accompanying him was injured.

"I asked him to go out and a policeman came and helped us immediately. Police reached the spot within minutes and helped people," he said.

Delhi blast: US offers assistance to India

Source: Deccan herald Condemning the bomb explosion outside the Delhi High Court that killed 11 people, the US Wednesday underlined solidarity with India and offered its assistance in bringing the perpetrators of the crime to justice.

“On behalf of all Americans, I extend deep condolences to the government of India and the families of those harmed in this morning’s attacks on the New Delhi High Court,” US Chargé d’Affaires Peter Burleigh said in a statement. “Terrorism is a crime that affects us all. Bombings like today’s demonstrate that our shared struggle continues against those who would commit such atrocities,” he said. “The US remains shoulder to shoulder with India in the fight against terror, and will provide whatever assistance possible to help bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice,” he added. The blast outside the Delhi High Court left 11 dead and 76 injured. Subsequently, Delhi was put on high alert with security beefed up across the city.

Bomb blast outside Delhi HC; 9 killed, 45 injured

Bomb Blast

Zeenews Bureau

New Delhi: A powerful bomb went off outside the Delhi High Court at 10.17 am on Wednesday. At least nine persons are confirmed dead, while more than 45 others are injured.

As per eyewitnesses, the blast was very loud and powerful. Police are not ruling out the possibility of the blast being a terrorist attack. The bomb is said to have been placed in a briefcase and left near gate number five of the court.

Amid pandemonium, the injured were rushed to nearby hospitals like Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Safdarjung Hospital and Lady Hardinge Medical College and Hospital.

Gate number five of the High Court is near the reception and is very crowded in the mornings as people queue up to gain entry into the court.

Delhi Police Commissioner BK Gupta is at the spot. The entire area has been cordoned off by the Indian Army; forensic teams, including from the NSG, are already at work to collect evidence.

National Investigating Agency (NIA) sleuths are also at the spot.

Speaking to Zee News, UK Bansal, Secretary (Internal Security) in the Ministry of Home Affairs, said, “As of now, no details about the nature of the blast have emerged. The investigating agencies are probing every aspect of the blast.”

When quizzed by reporters whether it was an intelligence failure, Bansal said, “There was no specific intelligence input regarding today’s blast but this aspect will certainly be probed by investigating agencies.”

“It would be too early to say anything as to who is behind the blast as all important cites are generally on terrorists’ hit list,” Bansal said, adding, “An alert has been sounded in the entire city.”

On May 25, a blast had ripped through the parking lot of the High Court, but the police are yet to crack the case.

As per the people who were present in the court that day as well, today’s blast is more powerful than the last one.

Somalia pirates free MV Panama after $7 mln ransom paid

(Reuters) - Somali pirates freed the Liberian-flagged container ship MV PANAMA seized last December after receiving a $7 million ransom on Tuesday, pirates holding the ship told Reuters.
The vessel was hijacked on Dec. 10 en route from Tanzania to Mozambique with a crew of 23 from Myanmar.
"We received the agreed ransom of $7 million early in the morning after long negotiations. Now we have abandoned the ship and it is sailing away safely," a pirate who gave his name as Abdi told Reuters.
Somali piracy is estimated to cost the world economy billions of dollars a year and international navies struggle to combat the menace, especially in the Indian Ocean due to the vast distances involved. The shipping industry has warned that seaborne gangs pose an increasing threat to vital sea lanes.
The pirates are becoming increasingly violent and are able to stay out at sea for long periods using captured merchant vessels as mother ships

India finds proof of Pakistan training Somali pirates

Source: TOI
AHMEDABAD: It is now official: Somali sea pirates are being trained in Pakistan to carry out a proxy war against India. Though Indian security agencies had been hinting at a Pakistani link to Somali sea pirates since long, material evidence to support this assertion has only been recently recovered.
The evidence was obtained from nine foreign nationals caught from a hijacked Iranian vessel — MV Nafis-1, by the Indian Navy off Mumbai on August 14.
The vessel was brought to Porbandar on August 15 and those arrested — five Yemenis, two Tanzanians, one Kenyan and one Somali national — were handed over to Porbandar police.
Gujarat customs officials had seized a large quantity of food items from the vessel and also found rice packets and juice pouches bearing names of Pakistani companies. Gujarat customs officials also recovered two AK-47s, a pistol and a cache of foreign currency including $86,000 and 1,500 Saudi Riyal.
Officials seized bags full of tea leaves, which customs officials believe, were chewed by the pirates to stay awake.
"The guns have no label but the food items are packed and manufactured in Pakistan. Smugglers are not
generally found carrying such a large amount of foreign currency," said a senior customs official.
The fact that the foreigners were travelling in a low-speed merchant vessel unlike Somalian pirates who use high-speed boats, gave the arrested a benefit of doubt, said customs officials.
"We are taking help of foreign embassies to know if those arrested have a criminal record. We have three Arabic translators who are helping us. The arrested have confessed that they are smugglers and operate in Arabic countries, and were lost in waters before they were intercepted by Indian forces," said Dipen Bhadran, Porbandar superintendant of police.

Ship hijacked: Ansar Burney seeks release of crew

Source: TOI
AMRITSAR: Ansar Burney Trust International and Seafarers Rights International (UK) have joined hands for the release of hostages on board Panama flagged MV Iceberg from the clutches of their Somali captors.

While talking to TOI over phone from London on Tuesday , chairman of the trust and former federal minister for human rights, Pakistan, Ansar Burney informed that the meeting was held with the president of the seafarers rights international UK, Deirdre Fitzpatrick and the deputy vice-chancellor of the university of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa and professor of maritime law at Southampton UK, Hilton Staniland to discuss for the release of crew members of hijacked vessel .

The vessel was carrying a mixed cargo of general mechanical equipment and was bound for United Arab Emirates. Pirates armed with automatic weapons attacked and successfully boarded the ship he said. The vessel was originally carrying 24 crew members including 6 Indians, 4 Ghanaians, 2 Sudanese, 2 Pakistani and 1 Filipino and 8 Yemenis of which 1 Yemenis had died, informed Burney. He said Yemeni national 3rd officer of the vessel had died of malnutrition seven months after being taken hostage by Somali pirates and his body was kept in freezer of the vessel. "The condition of other crew members is also worrisome " he said.

He said the Dubai based owner of vessel which was attacked and hijacked by armed pirates on March 29, 2010 about 10 nautical miles off the port of Aden, Yemen had abandoned the crew and was not even negotiating with the pirates for their release. "But we are in constant touch with the relatives of Indian and Pakistan crew members" he said. He said Ansar Burney Trust International and Seafarers Rights International would now unitedly put efforts to resume negations with the Somali pirates and generate international pressure for the release of hijacked crew members.

Cyber terrorist threats loom 10 years after 9/11

Source: MSNBC

Attacks can be both low-tech as well as sophisticated, experts say 

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the possibility of a second devastating attack by al-Qaida or a similar group has been on the minds of many Americans. There has been much discussion as to whether terrorist groups could get access to nuclear, biological or chemical weapons — weapons of mass destruction.

Should we be concerned about another potential threat — a cyber weapon of mass destruction?

Yes, say security experts. The cyber terrorist threat is real, and plots involving such attacks may already be in the works.

[What Cyberwar Would Look Like]

According to Damon Petraglia, a director with Chartstone, a computer, network and digital forensic resource company based in Connecticut, and a member of the electronic crimes task force for the U.S. Secret Service, cyber terrorist attacks have been taking place for more than a decade.

“We have seen pro-Pakistani hackers repeatedly attacking computers in India with increasing frequency in the early 2000s,” Petraglia said. “In 2009, there were attacks against South Korean and United States websites presumed to originate from North Korea. In 2010, we saw the most sophisticated attack to date with Stuxnet in Iran.”

Stuxnet, Petraglia explained, was a worm with highly specialized malware coded to target only Siemens-manufactured Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems that control and monitor specific industrial processes. This code was created to sabotage the uranium-enrichment process at a specific Iranian nuclear facility by forcing changes in the rotor speeds of centrifuges.

We will continue to see more sophisticated attacks, as well as low-tech traditional attacks, emanating from hostile nations and groups,” Petraglia added. “Traditional terrorist groups and nation-states are able to fund the creation of extremely sophisticated attacks and technologies or tools to be used as weapons.”

What is, isn't cyber terrorism The Stuxnet attack on the Iranian nuclear facility was the attack that opened a lot of eyes in America and other Western countries to the potential cyber terrorist threat. But it also opened up a question: What exactly constitutes an act of cyber terrorism?

The definition of cyber terrorism has been highly debated since the 1990s, because it is not easy to define how devastating the damage caused by a single computer attack might be. The term itself has been controversial, sometimes inflated and used in different contexts.

However, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's definition of cyber terrorism is accepted by many. According to the FBI, cyber terrorism is any "premeditated, politically motivated attack against information, computer systems, computer programs and data which results in violence against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents."

Sorin Mustaca, data security expert with German anti-virus software maker Avira, sees the definition a bit differently.

“This definition is quite narrow because it compares cyber terrorism with traditional terrorism,” Mustaca said. “Unlike viruses or computer attacks that result in a denial of service a cyber terrorist attack is designed to cause physical violence or extreme financial harm.

“Possible cyber terrorist targets include the banking industry, military installations, power plants, air traffic control centers and water systems,” he added. “There are several other definitions which define it much more generally as any computer crime targeting computer networks without necessarily affecting real-world infrastructure, property, or lives.”

However you define cyber terrorism, don't use the Hollywood example, said Derek Manky, senior security strategist at Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Fortinet.

“Cyber terrorism is likely not what movies make it out to be,” Manky said. “Think of movies like 'Die Hard 4' where attackers launch a sophisticated, synchronized attack where they disrupt traffic lights, phone lines and TV broadcasts at the same time.

“The truth of the matter,” he added, “is that many of these systems depend on different technology (hardware platforms, software, etc.) and different vulnerabilities need to be discovered to take control [of]/breach such systems.”

Who's likely to become a cyber terrorist? If defining cyber terrorism is difficult, profiling a potential cyber terrorist is only slightly easier.

“A cyberterrorist would fit a similar profile to a traditional terrorist, either domestic or foreign,” said Kurt Baumgartner, a senior malware researcher at Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab. “They maintain extreme views and justify their actions and intents with radical religious or radical political views.”

One primary difference between a cyber terrorist and a traditional terrorist is that the former would have a sophisticated knowledge of hacking and information-technology vulnerabilities — or would have the funds to employ people skilled in those areas.

They will likely be very creative, not necessarily well-educated formally, but very smart nonetheless,” Petraglia said. “They will think outside the box and employ unorthodox methods to solve problems.”

The experts agree about what the likely targets of a cyber terrorist attack would be.

"A cyber terrorist attack might exploit technical vulnerabilities in a state’s computer-supported infrastructure to disrupt critical networked systems, in order to produce a spectacle of shocking consequences," Baumgartner said.

"Such an attack may disrupt the electrical power grid on a coast, shipping on the Mississippi, rail trains crossing the U.S., pipelines delivering natural gas, the traffic lights in L.A., or it may cause systems to deliver dirty water to cities for an extended time."

 

Spain prosecutes 5 'ETA members' suspected of FARC ties

Source; columbiareports

Five alleged leaders of the Basque separatist group ETA, suspected of having ties to the Colombian leftist guerrilla group FARC, are being prosecuted in Spain, international media reported.
The suspected leaders were charged for leading the international division of ETA, known as "Askapena," which aids "organizations and entities involved in revolutionary processes or 'national and social liberation."
According to Spanish Judge Pablo Ruz, the alleged leaders held seminars to establish "frameworks for cooperation with other revolutionary movements and groups." The FARC's European delegate, alias "Lucas Gualdron," is suspected of having met with the leaders of Askapena.
One of the documents in the case against the alleged leaders discusses events that pay tribute to who they consider "Bolivarian internationalist heroes fallen in the slaughter of Sucumbios," referring to former FARC commanders such as Raul Reyes who were killed in combat.
This is not the first example of alleged ETA members funding and aiding the FARC. French authorities arrested one of Spain's most wanted terrorists in June 2011, an ETA member accused of collaborating with the FARC.

FARC Step Up Extortion; Multinationals Targeted

Source; insightcrime

The recent arrest of the FARC's alleged "extortion mastermind" is shows that the guerrillas are intent on expanding a revenue stream which will make Colombia's government very nervous: the extortion of multinational companies, with a special focus on the oil sector.

Fardy Edilson Parra, alias "Brayan," was reportedly arrested with more than 130 letters, addressed to a wide range of Colombian and multinational companies. He is accused of organizing extortion schemes for the Eastern Bloc of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC), active in Colombia's richest oil-producing regions, including the departments of Caqueta and Meta.
The papers found in Parra's possession appear to consist of a stock letter, each copy addressed to specific businesses and stamped with the FARC's logo. The text reportedly asks "businessmen, oilmen, palm oil traders and ranchers" to "collaborate" with the FARC's "002 Law;" a euphemism for extortion. Victims were told they had to send "economic support" of 200 to 500 million pesos (between $111,600 and $279,000) to the muncipality of La Uribe, the epicenter of the Eastern Bloc's activities in Meta.
Recipients would have included the Colombian offices of international chains like Microsoft, Nike, and Toyota (presumably addressed to the companies' central offices in Bogota, if they were actually addressed at all).
Others are reportedly local Colombian companies, ranging from beauty salons to lawyers' offices to transport companies. These include one of the FARC's most popular targets of extortion schemes: bus services like Flota Macarena and Expreso Bolivariano, whose vehicles are frequently burned and attacked when traveling through guerrilla territory. Flota Macarena, which serves Colombia's Eastern Plains, the stronghold of the FARC's Eastern Bloc, has reportedly had at least five buses destroyed while en route to Meta this year. The rebels are reportedly demanding that the company pay about 400,000 pesos (about $223) per bus, and another 400,000 pesos for each year that President Alvaro Uribe was in office (eight), during which, according to El Tiempo, the bus company paid the rebels nothing.
But the FARC's intimidation of bus companies -- as well as extortion threats directed against other Colombian businesses and multinationals -- are nothing new. Extortion was the original money-earner for the FARC, long before the group moved into kidnapping and the drug trade in the late 1970s. Companies who are slow in paying the FARC's "war tax" feel the effects: Occidental Petroleum's Caño-Limon pipeline, for example, was bombed 170 times in 2001 alone, as the FARC and the National Liberation Army (Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional - ELN) attempted to extract payoffs from the multinational.
What does appear new about the FARC's latest round of extortion efforts is the viciousness behind them. In one especially worrying development, a road bomb planted by the FARC killed one employee of a local subcontractor, GeoEnergy, and injured another five, after a company vehicle hit the explosive on August 3. The attack took place in San Vicente del Caguan, center of the FARC's safe haven during the 1999-2002 peace process.·
It's unlikely that this attack was an accidental case of a improvised explosive device (IED) hitting the wrong car. One of the FARC's most experienced military units, the Teofilo Forero Column, is active in San Vicente. If an SUV belonging to an energy company hits a roadside bomb in this area -- a tactic which, so far this year, the FARC have used exclusively against the security forces, not civilians -- it was because the FARC were sending a deliberate message: pay up.
There are plenty of signs indicating that the FARC intend to continue their campaign against oil multinationals, including mass kidnappings and·burned vehicles. But if this campaign turns more violent and we see an increase of similar IED attacks against oil company personnel, it won't necessarily be because the FARC want businesses to pay higher-than-usual "vacunas," or extortion taxes.
Rather, the intent seems to be to increase the pressure on President Juan Manuel Santos' administration, riding the wave of Colombia's current oil boom. Production is rising steadily and may hit one million bpd by the end of the year. Accompanying the surge is increased public resentment against the oil drillers in boomtowns like Meta's Puerto Gaitan, where oil subcontractors abused the labor force, sparking a wave of aggressive protests in late July.
In some ways, the rebels' targeting of the oil trade is meant to hit the government where it hurts: that is, one of Colombia's fastest-growing (and most profitable) industries. It is also an attempt by the rebels to curry favor with sections of Colombia's progressive left, who by and large have no interest in establishing links to the rebels, but are hostile towards the increased rate of mining and oil exploration carried out by multinationals on Colombian ground.
If oil production in Colombia wasn't entering such a golden age, it's doubtful that the FARC would have intensified their attacks against the sector. It's also doubtful that the extortion schemes allegedly carried out by alias "Brayan" were the rebels' real moneymakers. Letters to Colombia's local Nike office will probably yield the FARC few, if any, "vacuna" payments. The harassment and kidnapping of oil workers -- and the burning of company vehicles due to unpaid ransom -- is likely a great deal more effective, and something we may see more of, as Colombia's oil continues to gush.

Does Conflict Empower Women?

Source: morungexpress

“Necessity is the mother of Invention” is a well proven fact; similar has been the case with women of Kashmir. The armed conflict has imposed on them new alien roles, which they have readily accepted and are fulfilling the responsibilities of the same. During the initial phase of armed struggle, the women rubbed shoulders with men, and in many cases proved more effective than men, especially when the army or police would pick up the youth. The women of the locality would stage protests outside the army camps and pickets which would force the army to release the youth. The women would even resist the illegal detention of any youth, and would protest alongwith men against the atrocities of the State and army.
When the things turned ugly, and women found themselves in the line of fire, they retreated a bit from the active protests as the killings, rapes, abductions, torture and illegal detentions were threatening to disrupt the whole Social and Family life, which would have ultimately led to anarchy, but women took charge of their lives and responsibility of their families; they were overburdened by the challenges of extended responsibilities and roles but they didn’t panic and only due to their perseverance and steadfastness, a Social catastrophe was avoided. In the families whose lone bread earners were killed or disappeared, women began to shoulder the economic responsibilities, to educate their children and drive the cart of daily life.
Illiterate women, whose sons, spouses, brothers or fathers were serving jail sentences in different parts of Kashmir and India, began to follow their legal suits, contacted lawyers, got to learn about the draconian laws under which their beloved ones were imprisoned, got exposed to the legal clauses and knew which judges were hearing their cases. They began to visit various jails, torture and detention centers and traveled to alien places, which provided them diverse exposure, and they are well aware of the location of prisons, courts and cheap hotels to stay during which the trail was going on. Thus their personal tragedies made them emerge as empowered women, who control the lives of their kith and kin, despite the impediments of education, gender and birth.
Thousands of men have been killed in staged, fake encounters and in custody by the army and Police too. Then there are men, who have been picked by the army or police and since then none has heard about them, army and police claims they have run away from the custody, whereas their families allege that the disappeared souls are either in the custody of the agencies that picked them or have been killed who are occupying the unknown graves. According to the unofficial sources more than ten thousand persons are disappeared in Kashmir, and there are more than three thousand half widows(Half Widows are those women whose husbands have disappeared in the custody and there is no consensus among the scholars of different schools of thought about the stipulated time after which they can be pronounced as Widows and have the right to remarry). The disappearance is a brutal continuous source of agony for the family and those belonging to the victim as they always remain in a dilemma about the status of the victim, neither the law is able to declare him dead nor the dear ones are ready to accept him as dead, as the victim has vanished in thin air.
To follow the cases of these disappeared souls, mothers of the disappeared sons got together under the chairmanship of Parveena Ahangar, whose own son Javed Ahmad Ahangar is missing since 1990s from the army’s custody to form the Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) in 1994. Later on half widows too joined APDP. Since 1994 till date they have been fighting a continuous legal battle for Justice demanding the whereabouts of their beloved ones, which till now has yielded nothing, but Parveena a middle aged, illiterate, common woman has reiterated never to surrender or give up, and is inspiring others to follow her suit. On the 10th of every month, members of APDP stage a peaceful silent protest in the Pratap Park, located in the heart of Srinagar. Parveena is regularly invited to attend different seminars and conferences in different parts of the world, where she shares her agony and agony of thousands others.
The stalwarts of armed insurgency, most of whom either have been killed or have joined Pro-Freedom politics have been grossly negligent towards building institutions for the victims of conflict, instead the money which was contributed and channeled through them to take care of the victims of the conflict was siphoned and swindled off by the majority of them either for personal or political use, and the victims were left high and dry; and forced to fend for themselves which left them in pathetic conditions, where they are forced to be exploited in multi dimensional ways. It is one of the reasons where the common masses feel disgusted against the flag bearers of Aazadi, as they can’t relate their miseries and conditions to them. APDP with its little means tries to cater to the needs of the families of disappeared souls. Parveena holds that only mothers know the agony of losing a son, hence mothers have to be in the forefront in the struggle for Justice.
Armed insurgency which now has lost its momentum as a result of which women now are regaining their public space back once again, and are even on the forefront of the protests that have rocked Kashmir Valley for last three consecutive years since 2008. Women are also active in the Peace and Reconciliation efforts too, though these initiatives are still an elite venture.
Thus conflict made women of Kashmir to acquire new roles, and with it came its own set of problems and responsibilities and women have proved to be oceans of sacrifice and courage and with a smiling face they are delivering what these roles demand from them. But there is a flipside of the conflict which is having an adverse effect on women and has made them more vulnerable to various evils and their rights are violated with impunity.
The incidents of Domestic violence have gone up due to the impact of conflict, as the men folk are being daily humiliated by the army and police bruising their self esteem and crushing their self confidence, who in turn to want to regain and assert their authority, stature, status and manliness against women hence coerce them to submission. They avenge their humiliation from their womenfolk, which even in many cases has resulted in death.
The women related to militants and Pro-Freedom voices suffer from governmental and State apathy, hostility and hate at every step of their lives, and those related to renegades or counter insurgents from Social apathy, as they are declared as Social outcastes, and their women and children have to face a host of problems.
Families, whose bread earners have been killed, find women trying hard to keep the family together, often neglecting their own health. The financial constraints drive them from pillar to post and cultural impediments and social norms don’t even permit some of them to beg.
Previously it was the father, brother, husband or son who used to provide security to his daughter, sister, wife or mother but given the situation prevalent in Kashmir the roles have been reversed. The women shoulder their men when they are encountered with a calamity, though social norms inhibit women visiting Police Stations, army camps and torture centers, but the situation demands so and in the process they get a bad name label.
Child marriage is becoming rampant in the heavily militarized areas, so as to escape rape and molestation by the army. The drop out rate of girls from schools is also on rise, in order to escape the routine taunts and harassment by the army enroute to school. Some girls have been even forced to marry certain people of influence through coercion by Police and counterinsurgents and in case of resistance; either the girl has been raped or killed. There has been no survey about the exact number of rapes committed against the Kashmiri women but in a survey conducted by Medicans San Frontiers(Doctors Without Borders) an International NGO in 2006 on “Kashmir: Violence and Health”, 11.6 percent of interviewees said they had been victims of sexual violence since 1989. Almost two thirds of the people interviewed (63.9 percent) by MSF had heard about cases of rape during the same period. The study revealed that Kashmiri women were among the worst sufferers of sexual violence in the world. The figure is much higher than that of Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Chechnya and Ingushetia. Many teenage girls are now going for counseling in order to cope the rising psychological impact of the atrocities on women perpetuated by army and police. The suicide rate among women of Kashmir is on rise and the ramifications of conflict have contributed to its steep increase among women.
The women of Kashmir have been dragged to flesh trade, and they are exploited in this process as they are offered money sometimes but most of times denied. The lower rung Special Police Officers(SPO)s are even a part of this vicious circle, who would marry a girl, then sell her to others or make her to visit their higher officers for sexual favors. These women forced in the flesh trade are even used as mukhbirs(spies) or even coerced to drag other girls in their net, thus the vicious circle continued and the girls had no escape from the same. Luring the poor girls for jobs and then sexually exploiting them, came to the forefront on a large scale in the form of VIP Sex Scandal 2006 in which high rank police officials, top bureaucrats and politicians were involved in sexploitation of the young local girls, all of whom were educated, some even with bachelors and masters degree, though most of then were not poor, but they needed jobs for attaining social status. In Kashmir it now has become difficult for young unemployed girls to find a suitable groom, as the marriage market demands the girl to be employed, and more the high paying job, more are the chances of having a similarly high status groom, this trend is making the girls run helter skelter for jobs and in the process fall in the trap of sex exploiters, who in this case happened to be men of Power.
The sexploitation of women in Kashmir still continues unabated, and now there are many clear signals that Kashmiri girls are even trafficked to other states for prostitution, and sooner or later this brutal fact will too dawn on the people of Kashmir.
The recent population census of 2011 has brought to fore various shocking facts about women of Kashmir, of which the drastic decline in the female sex ratio will have serious ramifications in the future, though some leaders have even advised the men to turn gay, but we must try to find the real roots of this decline, as the Sex ratio has dropped from 906 per thousand males in 2001 to 883 in 2011, as the decadal census proved. One of the reasons for this drastic fall is the vulnerability of women via the presence of army in Kashmir who ravage their chastity with impunity, hence numerous incidents of rape and molestations by the army and zero percent persecution of the culprits has reinforced the belief of parents that they can’t afford the liability of a girl child. Other reasons like Dowry, patriarchal hostility towards girl child, unemployment and a host of other issues too contribute to the brutal female feticide, which is continuing unabated, despite dire warnings in the Quran against such inhuman, uncivilized, brutish, nasty and savage practice. Also many girls have been left unclaimed in hospitals by their parents, giving rise to another issue of catering to these infants, which mostly are adopted and if not the orphanages, special homes have no arrangement for the same. The Social & Child rights workers encounter serious challenges while addressing this new problem.
Women of Kashmir even in 21st century suffer from scores of problems and issues in this corner of the world, where women still have numerous inhibitions and are far from empowered. Women of Kashmir have adopted and acquired new roles that conflict imposed and demanded from them, but the perpetual denial of Justice, failure to bestow equal rights on them, structural prejudices prevalent in society against them, absence of institutions which will cater to their needs, marginalization of their dissent, suppression of their voices and turning a blind eye towards their sacrifices and contribution has obviously led to their souls being bruised, vision blurred, physique burdened, courage undermined, voices chocked but despite all these hurdles they play a significant part in holding the family and society together. They have always proven to be an inspiration for men to continue their struggle against occupation and atrocities. Every conflict brings in its wake new roles for women, and in most cases women comply with the same, same has happened in Kashmir too, but these roles have both Positive as well negative implications depending on the manner, means and degree of exposure to the conflict and its impact on the lives of women.
What more new roles or disastrous implications conflict will have on women of Kashmir in future, only time will tell!!

Chechen rebels are dangerously desperate

Source: moscownews

Last week’s triple suicide bombing in Grozny killed nine people and embarrassed Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov. It was a reminder that even if the center of gravity of the North Caucasus insurgency has shifted to Dagestan and Ingushetia, the conflict in Chechnya is not over.

However, the main audience for which the attacks were intended were not in the streets of Grozny, nor even in the corridors of the Kremlin, but in the hills of Chechnya.

Although they still have the capacity to launch individual terrorist attacks, including January’s Domodedovo bombing, the Chechen rebel movement is in serious decline. Even Chechens who dislike the autocratic Kadyrov are tired of the almost two decades of war and suspicious of the extreme jihadism of the remaining rebels.

The rebels themselves are squabbling. Last year, a collection of field commanders, backed by the shadowy Saudi-born Mukhannad challenged the authority of rebel leader Doku Umarov.

This became a stalemate that further sapped the rebels’ strength. This April, though, Mukhannad was killed by government forces. Realising that they were fighting to control the rudder of a sinking ship, in July the two factions made a public show of reconciliation, with the challengers reaffirming their support for Umarov.

However, this was very much a reconciliation of convenience. There is no love lost between the commanders and Umarov’s authority over many of the leaders of the smaller gangs of rebels out in the field is tenuous, at best.

© RIA Novosti. / Said Tcarnaev

Bloodshed is likely to threaten Kadyrov’s position

All terrorism is theater, an attempt to influence an audience. The Grozny attacks were part of the internal drama of rebel politics. Umarov is desperate to try and appear relevant, dynamic and effective, and when he is desperate, he turns to his main remaining ally.

That man is Amir Khamzat, commander of the Riyad-us-Saliheen Martyr Brigade, the rebels’ main source of suicide bombers. His speciality is in persuading young Chechens, often those who have lost loved ones to the war, to blow themselves up.

Whenever Umarov has needed to try to re-establish his authority, suicide attacks have followed, including Domodedovo and the 2010 Moscow metro attack. And so again Khamzat’s bombers set out to make headlines and shore up Umarov’s position. In cold, military terms, the attack was no great success. Trading three suicide bombers for seven police officers is a bad deal for the rebels, as the government forces outnumber them by a margin of at least eight to one.

Umarov hopes that striking at Grozny will help restore his authority. In this he is almost certainly wrong. The rebel movement will continue to fade under his politically-bankrupt leadership.

However, there are three unfortunate implications.

The first is that the rebels, or at least the Riyad-us-Saliheen, will step up their terrorism. They will probably focus on launching new attacks in Chechnya, in the hope this will weaken Kadyrov, but they will not pass up on any opportunities to strike elsewhere in Russia.

The second is that Kadyrov, whose position had been looking a little shaky, is ironically enough strengthened. President Medvedev appears to be no fan of his and was looking for ways to clip his wings. When it looked that he and his army of ‘Kadyrovtsy’ had all but crushed the rebels, it was possible to daydream of a Chechnya without him. For the moment, though, Moscow still needs him, his paramilitaries and his iron fist.

Indeed, the attacks give Kadyrov justification for his authoritarian ways. Even some Chechen officials had begun to question them, but now he has the perfect excuse.

So, expect more attacks, Kadyrov to stay in office and a renewed crackdown in Chechnya. But there is some hope. There are not many would-be suicide bombers, these campaigns don’t last long, and this is a last or next-to-last gasp from a movement that has lost its connection with the Chechen people.

Mark Galeotti is Clinical Professor of Global Affairs at New York University’s SCPS Center for Global Affairs. His blog, “In Moscow’s Shadows,” can be read at: http:// inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com

Dagestan: As an Insurgency Rages, a Soccer Team Rises

Source: time blogs
The Washington Post ran a lengthy feature Tuesday on the violence in Dagestan, the restive Muslim-majority republic in Russia's North Caucasus region whose troubles have long hovered under the radar as the world fretted over the Chechen insurgency and Moscow's tensions with independent Georgia to the south. Yet, as this 2009 U.S. cable claims, the security situation in Dagestan made the republic “the most dangerous place in Russia's volatile North Caucasus.”
The Post sketches the conflict there — what is, almost mechanically, described in the press as a “low-level insurgency” — in terms of a sectarian clash between a dissident strain of orthodox Salafism and the Sufi secularists who rule the republic in Moscow's name. Even if this binary is an oversimplification, Dagestan remains a place under the grip of an unpopular regime and stalked by extremists. Says the Post:

Police have killed 100 people they identified as rebels since the beginning of the year, Interior Ministry officials said in June, and human rights activists accuse police of killing first and then finding a crime to assign to the body.
Local journalists estimate that 1,000 to 1,500 armed men are in the forest at any one time, with perhaps 5,000 others prepared to join them. The forest shelters organized terrorism as well — the U.S. government has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to Doku Umarov, a Chechen terrorist with al-Qaeda connections suspected of hiding in Dagestan who has been accused of terrorist attacks on Moscow.

Police officers in the republic's capital, the Caspian Sea city of Makhachkala, line up behind fortifications reminiscent of compounds for security officers in Iraq or Afghanistan — and, like in those war-ravaged countries, still are routinely subject to attacks. As in Chechnya, the legacy of decades of Soviet rule and heavy-handed Russian policy-making smolders. And, as in Chechnya, Moscow and the ruling establishment have looked to an anachronistic tactic to win hearts and minds: the 21^st century's opiate of the masses, the grand spectacle of soccer.
While Chechnya's controversial President Ramzan Kadyrov brought a string of global all-star teams to Grozny, Dagestan took a similar, perhaps more eye-catching tack. Anzhi Makhachkala, a soccer team in the Russian first division that until this year was as unheralded as it was obscure, has become almost overnight a budding global powerhouse. Bankrolled by the Dagestani billionaire Suleiman Kerimov, who bought the team in January, Anzhi has gone on an incredibly spending spree, catapulting a club that only came into existence in 1991 possibly into contention with Europe's leading lights. Their greatest capture so far? Last week's signing of Samuel Eto'o, arguably the greatest player out of Africa in the past decade and, at the age of 30, now also the highest paid athlete in the history of the sport.
The arrival of Eto'o in this mountainous, impoverished, fringe corner of Europe is an incredible switch for a superstar accustomed to mass adoration in Barcelona and Milan. Kerimov, an oligarch who made his fortune in fertilizers and minerals, seems cut from the same cloth as Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire and pal of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who has plowed large sums of his own money into soccer in Russia and abroad. Writing in the Guardian, Jonathan Wilson, noted soccer journalist and an authority on the game in Eastern Europe, suggests it's likely that Moscow's political imperatives have stoked Anzhi's rise. Wilson writes:

It's a fairly open secret that oligarchs are encouraged by Vladimir Putin to invest in sporting ventures. Kerimov may be a diehard Anzhi fan, but it seems just as likely that he was advised to invest. After all, if Anzhi do well, it 'normalises' the situation in Dagestan, just as Terek Grozny's ongoing presence in the top flight supposedly makes Chechnya a more palatable place. Decentralisation, reaching out to the regions, has been a cornerstone of Putin's policy in all spheres (its success in football is seen in the fact that none of the last four champions have been from Moscow).

Yet it's still hard to see who this audacious venture really impresses. The team trains in the Moscow region, far from unstable Dagestan, and flies into Makhachkala only to play “home” games. Eto'o, if some rumors are to be believed, may remain in Italy (where he had been playing for Inter Milan) and link up with his team aboard a private jet. It's difficult to see how such a fleeting connection to Dagestan could mollify the discontent of Salafist dissidents.
Nor is the rest of Russia all that pleased with Anzhi's emergence. When recent Anzhi arrival Yuri Zhirkov, formerly of London's Chelsea, turned out for the Russian national team, he was booed savagely by his own country's fans. They were angry about the perceived political leg-up afforded to a number of North Caucasus sides — a sentiment likely tinged with longstanding prejudices against those from the Caucasus.
And so the show goes on, with Dagestan's own Harlem Globetrotters vying for supremacy in Russia. But even the most glamorous of sporting headlines will add little gloss to an embittered republic, a world away from Moscow and at war with itself

Terror leader Younis al-Mauritani planned to hit Australia

Source: australian

A SENIOR al-Qa'ida militant said to be plotting terrorist strikes against Australia, the US and Europe has been arrested in Pakistan in an operation heralded by Islamabad and Washington as a significant blow to the global outfit.

Younis al-Mauritani "was tasked personally by Osama bin Laden with hitting targets of economical importance in the US, Europe and Australia", Pakistan's military said in a statement.

"He was planning to target US economic interests including gas/oil pipelines and power-generating dams, and strike ships/oil tankers through explosive-laden speed boats."

Along with commander Ilyas Kashmiri - suspected to have been killed in a June drone attack - and US subway terror mastermind Adnan el Shukrijuma, Mauritani is believed to have led al-Qa'ida's external operations council. He was arrested with two accomplices in the restive southwest Pakistani city of Quetta - the headquarters in exile of the Taliban leadership - and is being detained for questioning. The statement named the other two detainees as Abdul-Ghaffar al-Shami and Messara al-Shami.

The arrests, a week after the US claimed to have killed al-Qa'ida's second-in-command Atiyah Abd al Rahman in a drone strike in North Waziristan, and four months after the killing of bin Laden, are sure to affect the group's ability to carry out attacks.

An Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spokesman said yesterday that he was unaware of specific plans to strike Australia but expected information to emerge. Australian officials will seek access to Mauritani, but the spokesman said no third country would be allowed to question him without written permission from his country of origin, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.

Attorney-General Robert McClelland said yesterday that while Australia had disrupted four major terrorist plots since 9/11, the threat from home-grown extremists was ever-present.

"Thirty-seven of 38 people prosecuted for these acts have been Australian citizens, with 21 of the 38 born in Australia," he said. "While the death of Osama bin Laden was an important milestone in the international fight against terrorism . . . al-Qa'ida's ability to adapt and change leadership endures."

Security analysts have suggested Mauritani, a likely member of al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb region of Africa, was in Quetta attempting to recruit fighters from other Jihadist groups based in Balochistan and tribal regions of Pakistan. Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported that US agents seized a strategy paper written by Mauritani from the bin Laden compound in May that outlined plans for the European strikes.

But little else is known of the African militant.

He is not on the FBI list of most wanted terrorists and US officials have denied he is al-Qa'ida's No 3 commander - a claim allegedly made by Afghan German Ahmad Siddiqi, arrested in Kabul last year also in relation to the European terrorism plot.

The timing of Mauritani's arrest, understood to have taken place in the past fortnight, is significant given this Sunday is the 10-year anniversary of al-Qa'ida's 9/11 attacks on the US.

Also notable is the Pakistani military's new conciliatory tone. It credited the CIA yesterday with providing "technical assistance" - believed to be information from phone intercepts.

"This operation was planned and conducted with the technical assistance of US intelligence agencies with whom ISI has a strong, historic intelligence relationship. Both Pakistan and US intelligence agencies continue to work closely together to enhance security of their respective nations," it said.

The White House described the arrests as an "example of the longstanding partnership between the US and Pakistan in fighting terrorism".

The statements suggest a rapprochement between the CIA and ISI, which have been at a tense standoff since the US raid in May on the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad.

EU Warns of Al Qaeda ‘Relocation’

Source: WSJ
By James Fidler
European Union counter-terrorism chief Gilles de Kerckhove offered a somber review of a decade of post-9/11 European efforts to stymie terror threats, mixing warnings of continued vulnerability with a few upbeat observations.
First, the bad news.
The Arab Spring, Mr. de Kerckhove warned, provided a “huge opportunity for al Qaeda to re-energize” should the region’s populace become discontent in the face of lagging reform. Of even greater concern is the dismantling of security architecture that has accompanied regime change in North Africa, and the vacuum this has created that will prove challenging to fill.
Already, Mr. de Kerckhove said, opened jails throughout Egypt and Tunisia have released jihadists that “may want to go back on the battlefield,” and that al Qaeda affiliates have recently acquired small arms and possibly surface-to-air missiles amidst chaos in Libya.
Mr. de Kerckhove said the diminishing threat from Afghanistan and Pakistan may in fact point not to a decline in terrorist activity, but a relocation. He called conditions in the Sahel region – a belt of land from Mauritania to the Sudan – a “deadly cocktail” cultivating extremism and trafficking, in drugs, stolen goods and people. He also saw the potential for a heightened terrorist risk from Yemen and the North Caucasus.
The European official was also candid when discussing the shortfalls of EU counter-terrorism strategy since its conception in 2005. Two of the central pillars of the remit have so far received insufficient attention: preventing the root causes of radicalization and work on improving how member states would actually react to a major terrorist attack.
On the former weakness, he identified the rise of Europeans drawn to fighting in jihadist hotspots, and home-grown terrorists – such as Belgian-based Chechen Lors Dukayev’s attempted bombing of a Danish newspaper last year – as two increasingly important threats to European security.
Joint EU-U.S. counter-terrorism collaboration also continues to fall short.  Mr. de Kerckhove called tighter European data privacy legislation “a nightmare for the U.S.,” for sharing data and conducting joint operations. He reaffirmed European unease about detention without trial.
There were, at least, some bright spots.
Mr. de Kerckhove noted significant successes against the traditional al Qaeda movement located in the Pashtun border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He deemed a 9/11 style attack in Europe as “no longer possible” and saw proof of “the real failure of the al Qaeda project” in the calls for democratic reform which drove the Arab Spring. Those reform efforts, he said, are “a clear demonstration of the complete irrelevance of al Qaeda rhetoric,” he said.

Tribal Elders in Gadhafi Stronghold Meet Rebels

Source: WSJ

TARHOUNA, Libya—Tribal elders from one of Col. Moammar Gadhafi's last strongholds were trying to persuade regime loyalists holed up there to lay down their arms, the elders said during Tuesday talks with rebel negotiators, hours after a large convoy of heavily armed Gadhafi soldiers crossed the desert into neighboring Niger.

The elders left the besieged town of Bani Walid, a desert town 90 miles southeast of Tripoli, to meet with rebels in a tiny mosque about 40 miles away.

"The revolutionaries have not come to humiliate anyone. We are all here to listen," Abdullah Kenshil, the chief rebel negotiator, said at the start of the meeting.

Then, in a message clearly intended for the hardcore Gadhafi loyalists in Bani Walid, some of whom may be fearing rebel retribution, he added: "I say we are not like the old regime. We don't take revenge and we don't bear grudges."

A 200-strong convoy has crossed the Libyan border into Niger, sparking fears that Gadhafi has escaped justice in Libya. Video courtesy of Reuters. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Gadhafi loyalists have been holed up in several towns, including Bani Walid. Thousands of rebel fighters have surrounded the town.

The four tribal elders at the meeting said rumors were circulating in Bani Walid that the rebels were going to rape the women of the town and kill the people.

"Bani Walid is split into two groups," said Moftah al-Rubassi. "The first and the majority want peace. The second, these are people who have been implicated (as part of Gadhafi's regime), either by blood or money, and they are cowards."

He said quickly restoring the city's basic services—it has had no water or electricity for many days—would assure residents of the rebels' intentions. The rebels said that would happen as soon as possible.

Col. Gadhafi's whereabouts are unknown, but speculation has centered on his hometown of Sirte, Bani Walid and Sabha in the far south.

Gadhafi spokesman Moussa Ibrahim was defiant in a Tuesday phone call to the Syrian TV station al-Rai, saying the ousted dictator was "in excellent health, planning and organizing for the defense of Libya." Mr. Ibrahim, who the rebels believe was in Bani Walid, said both Gadhafi and his sons remain in Libya.

"We are fighting and resisting for the sake of Libya and all Arabs," he said. "We are still strong and capable of turning the tables on [the North Atlantic Treaty Organization]," he said, though the regime effectively collapsed more than a week ago.

Another rebel official, Khaled al-Zintani, said rebels had arrested Khalid Kaim, Col. Gadhafi's deputy foreign minister in Tripoli on Monday.

A video, posted on rebels' Facebook pages, showed Mr. Kaim in a white robe sitting on a bed, with young men shouting at him.

"You are a dog," yelled the rebels, some of them in military uniform. "But we will treat you in a good way," one added.

He responded by saying: "I swear to God, I had good intentions."

Late Monday, meanwhile, a large convoy of Gadhafi loyalists rolled into the central Niger town of Agadez, said Abdoulaye Harouna, the owner of the local newspaper. The convoy consisted of more than a dozen pickup trucks bristling with well-armed Libyan troops, said Mr. Harouna, who saw the arrival.

The convoy left Tuesday morning for Niger's capital, Niamey, about 600 miles to the south.

Enlarge Image

Associated Press

Rebels reinforcements from Tripoli goes through a checkpoint between Tarhouna and Bani Walid, towards the front in Bani Walid, Libya, Monday.

At the head of the convoy, Mr. Harouna said, was Tuareg rebel leader Rissa ag Boula, a native of Niger who led a failed war of independence on behalf of ethnic Tuareg nomads a decade ago. He then sought refuge in Libya and was believed to be fighting on behalf of Gadhafi.

It wasn't immediately clear if the convoy included any members of the Gadhafi family or other high-level members of his regime.

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Col. Gadhafi is believed to have financed the Tuareg rebellion in the north of Niger. African nations where Tuaregs represent a significant slice of the population, like Niger, have been among the last to recognize the rebels that ousted Gadhafi.

Col. Gadhafi remains especially popular in towns like Agadez, where a majority of the population is Tuareg.

Mr. Harouna said the pro-Gadhafi soldiers accompanying Mr. Boula were coming from the direction of Arlit.

The isolated desert that stretches north of Arlit borders both Libya and Algeria. Some members of Col. Gadhafi's family, including his wife, his daughter Aisha and two of his sons, recently sought refuge in Algeria.

A rebel spokesman for Tripoli's military council said the rebel leadership was aware of the convoy but had few details.

"It was not a large number of soldiers. We think it was a protection team of some sort," Anis Sharif said.

A NATO official in Brussels said the alliance didn't have any immediate information about the convoy.

NATO warplanes don't normally patrol that far south in the Sahara, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with standing alliance policy.

Meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration, an aid group that focuses on post-disaster displacement, said more than 1,200 migrants had taken refuge at an IOM transit center in the southern loyalist stronghold of Sabha.

The migrants, most of them from Chad, but also including people from Niger, Nigeria and other countries, had fled to the transit center to escape increasing fighting between rebel and loyalist forces on the outskirts of town.

But with no electricity and little food or water, the situation for everyone in the town is becoming increasingly perilous.

"The migrants are very scared and threatened," said Qasim Sufi, the organization's chief of mission for Chad. Mr. Sufi said they had lost contact with the town for two weeks, but an urgent call Monday informed them of the migrants and asked for urgent evacuation.

Hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharan Africans worked in Col. Gadhafi's Libya, doing everything from managing hotels to sweeping floors. But some also fought as pro-Gadhafi mercenaries, and many migrant workers have fled ahead of the rebels, fearing they would be mistaken for mercenaries.

Sri Lanka Rights Record Under Spotlight

Source: WSJ
Pressure on Sri Lanka to allow an independent investigation of war crimes committed by the government and the Tamil Tigers at the end of their 26-year war is mounting.
First, a United Nations-appointed panel found in a report released in April that both sides caused tens of thousands of civilian deaths during the closing months of the civil war in 2009. The report found the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa lacked the political will to mount a full investigation into war crimes and called instead for a U.N.-backed independent inquiry.
Now, Amnesty International, the human rights advocacy group, has penned a report out Wednesday that says Sri Lanka’s own investigations into the final stages of the war is deeply flawed.
Mr. Rajapaksa’s government is slated in November to release the findings of its inquiry, known as the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission.
“The Sri Lankan government has, for almost two years, used the LLRC as its trump card in lobbying against an independent international investigation,” says Sam Zarifi, director for Amnesty International in the Asia-Pacific region. “Officials described it as a credible accountability mechanism, able to deliver justice and promote reconciliation. In reality it’s flawed at every level: in mandate, composition and practice.”
The civil war came to a climax in a battle over 13.5 square miles of territory in the northeast of Sri Lanka between January and May of 2009. More than 300,000 civilians were trapped in the fighting between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the formal name of the Tamil Tigers.
Amnesty says the commission, constituted by Mr. Rajapaksa in May 2010, has failed to carry out credible investigations into claims the government shelled civilian targets such as hospitals and schools. It also did not properly look into allegations the Tamil Tigers used civilians as shields, the report says.
The chairman of the commission instructed witnesses during collection of evidence to “forget the past” and instead focus on telling the government about any problems getting access to housing, medical care or education, according to Amnesty.
The Sri Lankan government denies carrying out atrocities. It organized anti-U.N. rallies in April to protest the release of the panel’s report. Mr. Rajapaksa is popular among Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese ethnic group for ending the quarter-century war against the Tamil Tigers.
But he has faced international criticism for mistreatment of Sri Lanka’s 4 million Tamil minority. Two years after the war ended, the Tamil majority areas in the north and east of the country remain militarized by the Sinhalese-dominated army.
Still, an international inquiry is unlikely. Sri Lanka is not a member of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, meaning allegations of war crimes are unlikely to be tried there.
Only the U.N. Security Council can order an ICC probe into a country that doesn’t belong to the court or fails to carry out its own credible probe, but it’s unlikely to do this in Sri Lanka’s case.
For now, India is playing a cautious role due to its own flawed history of involvement in Sri Lanka. In the 1980s, India saw itself as a protector of Tamil rights and helped train the Tamil Tigers. But it later sent peace-keeping troops to fight them and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by Tamil Tiger militants in 1991.
New Delhi did not comment on the U.N.-appointed panel report and has been an ineffectual voice in speaking up for Tamil rights. Some analysts say India is scared that by berating Colombo it might lose out to China’s growing influence in Sri Lanka.
Corrections and Amplifications: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that Sri Lanka has a 60 million Tamil minority. Sri Lanka has a 4 million Tamil minority.

Hacking Scandal Roils Dutch Public

By JOHN W. MILLER in Brussels and MAARTEN VAN TARTWIJK in Amsterdam

The Dutch government Tuesday sought to contain a hacking scandal officials believe originated in Iran that has forced segments of this country to return to the fax and paper age.

Prosecutors said they would investigate the company that was providing digital security for DigiD, a Dutch government site that allows citizens to access a large number of services, including filing taxes, signing up for university and donating organs.

The provider—U.S.-owned, Netherlands-based DigiNotar—was dismissed by the government last week as officials disclosed the hacking.

Other Recent Hacks

• An April denial-of-service attack against Sony followed a breach of the company's computer system in which information of 100 million online-game players was stolen. Sony shuts PlayStation online network for nearly a month and estimates the attack, apparently spurred by a suit against a programmer who wrote software allowing gamers to reconfigure PlayStation 3 consoles, cost it $171 million.
• In early June, Citigroup said hackers viewed roughly 1.5% of its 23.5 million North American credit-card accounts. About 3,400 of the customers whose credit-card information was hacked suffered about $2.7 million in losses, the bank told U.S. officials in late June.
• Lulz Security said it attacked Sony's movie studio, compromising the personal data, including passwords and email addresses, of more than 1 million users.

--Source: WSJ research

In July, DigiNotar suffered the theft of hundreds of certificate codes used to prove a website's authenticity to viewers. Armed with these codes, hackers can secure security authentication for bogus websites, from which they can steal data and personal information entered by users.

The Dutch government believes that the perpetrators of the hacking were in Iran, based on information it received from a security consultancy, Fox-IT. The government said Monday that 300,000 Internet users in Iran had been spied on using the fake certificates. It didn't mention any other victims.

The results and repercussions of the Dutch investigation could shape the future of online commerce and government sites, and the regulation that covers them, as more and more government administrations switch from paper to online. An estimated nine million Dutch citizens, in a population of about 17 million, used DigiD.

The Dutch hacking case "is a huge deal," said Jonathan Todd, a spokesman for Neelie Kroes, the EU's digital agenda commissioner. "This latest case illustrates the risks and the challenges of e-government and online commerce, and the European Commission is working on a coherent European response to meet these challenges."

What that means exactly for tech companies is still unclear, but EU officials say they will consider mandating tougher supervision for online certification companies, which guarantee a website's authenticity for the viewer.

"We do know for a fact that the legislation on digital signatures is going to change," said Ilias Chantzos, a lobbyist in Brussels for Symantec Corp., which last year bought Verisign Inc., a Dulles, Va.-based company that issues digital certificates.

Meanwhile, the biggest headaches are in the Netherlands.

The Dutch government said it planned to review the authentication system due to the hacking scandal. "We need to consider if the system as we know it is the best one available," said Vincent van Steen, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior.

In what is shaping up as one of the most damaging hacking cases for a single country, courts have advised lawyers to switch to fax and old-fashioned paper mail instead of email.

Lawyers can't access the Dutch Bar Association's Intranet, and have been told by courts to switch to fax machines and mail until the problems are solved. "Most of our work is digital. But now we have to use notes, which is like a step back in time," said Diederik Maat, a lawyer in the northern Netherlands. "For courts and law firms, this is an administrative nightmare."

At a news conference on Saturday, Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner advised citizens worried about the security of their communications with the government to return to pen and paper.

The government over the weekend extended the online tax deadline indefinitely, until DigiD can again be declared secure.

The Dutch government is currently switching to certificates provided by other suppliers, such as Getronics Pink Rocade, a unit of Hague-based KPN NV. It will also look for ways to bolster supervision and it has promised to review the concept of e-government.

DigiNotar, which was acquired by Chicago-based Vasco Inc. in 2010, has admitted finding out about the hacking in July. The government didn't say when it found out about the hacking.

A spokesman for DigiNotar declined to comment on the case."But we will cooperate with the Dutch government in the most constructive manner to solve the problems," he said.

In a statement issued Tuesday, Vasco said it hadn't yet incorporated DigiNotar technology into its own products: "This means that all Vasco products in the market today are 100% DigiNotar-free."

Google Inc. said it was no longer working with DigiNotar.

"Based on the findings and decision of the Dutch government, as well as conversations with other browser makers, we have decided to reject all of the Certificate Authorities operated by DigiNotar," information security manager Heather Adkins wrote in a blog post.

"We encourage DigiNotar to provide a complete analysis of the situation."

Write to John W. Miller at john.miller@dowjones.com and Maarten Van Tartwijk at maarten.vantartwijk@dowjones.com

Police Chief: Riots 'Took Us By Surprise'

Source: sky

London's police chief has admitted with hindsight he wished he had more officers on the streets at the height of last month's riots and the scale of the disorder "took us by surprise".

Acting Metropolitan Police commissioner Tim Godwin defended his force's handling of the unrest in the capital, which spread to other cities in England, as he appeared before a committee of MPs.

Mr Godwin said: "With hindsight I wish I had more officers on the streets on that Monday night to respond to what was 22 boroughs of serious disorder.

"We were not expecting that level and spread, that copycatting of sheer criminality."

He told the Home Affairs Committee: "The number of sites of disorder was not something we had witnessed before and that took us by surprise."

Dozens of police officers were hurt when riots swept across England

He added: "The most important thing is that we look at what occurred, learn from it and that next time, and if there is a next time and hopefully it will be very rare, that we will be able to deal with it in a different way...

"We need to do something about the fear of crime in inner cities. We've got to empower citizens in the inner cities to be able to stand up against the criminals."

He said of the riots: "I think this is a wake-up call for the criminal justice system.

"We have in London been seeking to speed up justice, make it more relevant, make it more relevant to communities, and that's something that we need to do.

"The amount of people who have previous convictions does pose questions for us."

Around 75% of over-18s charged with involvement in last month's unrest had criminal records, according to Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke.

Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens said Scotland Yard had 500 officers working on the inquiry and some 20,000 hours of CCTV footage still needed to be viewed.

Appearing earlier before the same committee, London's mayor Boris Johnson said the new Metropolitan Police commissioner will be announced on Monday.

Those in the running are understood to include Mr Godwin, Strathclyde's police chief Stephen House, the former head of Merseyside Police Bernard Hogan-Howe, and Acpo chief Sir Hugh Orde.

Acting Met Police chief Tim Godwin appears before MPs' committee

Shortlisted applicants will face questioning from the Metropolitan Police Authority and will also be scrutinised for the job by the Home Office.

Selectors are keen to secure a replacement for Sir Paul Stephenson in the wake of the phone-hacking investigation and the riots.

Mr Johnson told MPs that "four exceptional candidates" have come forward and it is now a question of "whittling that down".

The mayor also claimed Mr Clarke was right when he said a broken penal system needs to be tackled in the wake of the riots.

The Metropolitan Police will soon have a new boss

Mr Clarke was justified in saying the riots were the result of a system that fails to stop "a feral underclass" reoffending, Mr Johnson said.

Writing in The Guardian, Mr Clarke said: "It's not yet been widely recognised, but the hardcore of the rioters were in fact known criminals.

"Close to three quarters of those aged 18 or over charged with riot offences already had a prior conviction.

"That is the legacy of a broken penal system – one whose record in preventing reoffending has been straightforwardly dreadful."

Cameras in court: I see no reason why not

He added: "In my view, the riots can be seen in part as an outburst of outrageous behaviour by the criminal classes – individuals and families familiar with the justice system, who haven't been changed by their past punishments."

Senior politicians, police chiefs and legal figures have expressed widely differing opinions about how rioters and looters should be punished.

On Friday, director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer warned that offenders involved in the riots should be treated in the same way as other criminals.

Concerns have been raised that some of the sentences handed down were too tough.

Criminology Expert: Clarke Pointing To Re-offending

In one example, two men accused of trying to incite unrest via Facebook were each jailed for four years.

But Prime Minister David Cameron has praised the "tough message" the courts have been giving.

Mr Clarke, speaking to Sky News, hailed the "swift, strong justice" but he added "the idea that the length of sentence is going to solve the problem is simplistic nonsense".

Recent figures released by the Ministry of Justice show more than 1,500 people have now appeared in court over the riots.