Terrorism and militancy are being fanned to destabilise the economy of the country which is at the threshold of a double digit growth, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday said.

He said hostile forces seek to undermine the security and stability of our nation.

“Even while they (hostile forces) challenge our borders and our boundaries, they make attempts to destabilize our economy. Terrorism and militancy are being fanned to hinder the growth of our country,” Chidambaram said in his address at the CISF Raising Day Parade here.

He said since the 1980’s, India has emerged as one of the most happening economies of the world. “The past decade has seen good growth and our economy is on the threshold of a double digit growth,” Chidambaram said.

He said the country’s growth depends on infrastructure and the CISF, which guards some of the most critical installations, is securing India’s future.

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“General Fonseka, who dedicated himself to eradicate terrorism from this land, was apprehended the way a terrorist is seized and Rajapakse regime, by carrying out the move, attacked without any shame, what was left of democracy in the country said Leader of the JVP Somawansa Amarasinghe.   He said this speaking at a press conference held at the office of Gen. Sarath Fonseka today (9th).

Speaking further Mr. Amarasinghe said, “The officers who came to arrest Gen. Fonseka took him as if a terrorist was seized. I was there at the time. I saw all that with my eyes. We informed the incident to the media immediately. The security officials had taken away cameras and other equipment of the journalists who were present there. We also informed the world regarding this incident. Now the world is aware of this incident.

Now we have a question to ask from the masses in this country. Do you endorse this treatment meted out to the Army Commander who gave leadership to defeat terrorism in the country, who, without any concern for his own life, dedicated himself to bring victory to the Motherland? We also ask those who cast their votes to Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse whether they approve the move?

We also should mention that there are many Army officers who are being detained. We have to find out whether it is legal to detain them in that manner. The government accuses them of conspiracy, a coup and factionalizing of the Army. This is all because Gen. Sarath Fonseka contested Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse at the presidential election. Mahinda Rajapakse could   not establish the cultured society that should have been created after defeating terrorism. The wrong Gen. Fonseka did, according to the thinking of Mahinda Rajapakse and his clan, was the eradication of terrorism and coming forward to create a just and cultured society.

The general election will be held soon. Gen. Fonseka would be a great challenge to Mahinda Rajapakse regime. This is one of the reasons for the arrest of Gen. Fonseka. Mahinda Rajapakse has attacked what was left of democracy in the Motherland without any fear or shame. We would like to ask whether this is the end of democracy in the country.”

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Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Tuesday said the hydra-headed menace of terrorism was our common enemy and no one country could battle it out alone.

He termed the Friends of Democratic Pakistan “a collective determination against an evil mindset” and urged the international community to address root causes of terrorism such as poverty and unemployment.

The foreign minister was addressing the Friends of Democratic Pakistan’s Public-Private Partnership Conference in Dubai.

He said the three-year plan of reconstruction and rehabilitation in Malakand comprised close to 500 projects and would cost about $ 300 million.

The five year development plan, based on Post-crisis Needs Assessment, would cost around $1.2 billion, and the FoDP must expedite its process to complete these projects, the minister said.

Pakistan has suffered huge economic losses of over $35 billion since September 11 in terms of infrastructure, investment and exports, Qureshi said.

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As leaders meet in London this week to discuss countermeasures to Al-Qaeda’s growing threat in Yemen, one man here is hoping to fight terrorism with rap. “No Terrorists Please,” the soon-to-be-released single by Yemeni-American rapper Hagage “AJ” Masaed, targets both Yemeni youth and adults with an anti-extremist message of peace and tolerance.

He seems qualified. Dressed in hip-hop style, with baggy black jeans, but none of the bling jewelry and accessories that rappers often don, he is relaxed, good-natured and modest, combining Yemeni and American qualities. He speaks as if he’s been a friend for many years. “No Terrorists Please” has AJ’s trademark mix of American-English and Yemeni-Arabic rap, and an easy blend of hip-hop beats with traditional Arabic sounds and instruments like the oud and mizmar (a reed instrument).

The inspiration for the song first came to him when Korean tourists to Yemen were attacked by an 18-year-old last March.
“I got so upset when the Koreans came to visit Yemen and the kid blew himself up, killing them,” Masaed said. “I kept thinking, ‘Why did they have to die, because they were curious and wanted to visit Yemen?’ I was so upset with it, and I felt like, he was a young kid who was influenced by other people. That was probably the bottom line.”

The song’s first verse is a statement to distance the majority of Yemenis, AJ says, from the terrorist groups’ extremist ideology and violent tactics. “Yes man, in Yemen, al-watan [the nation], my home / Al-Qaeda, not welcome, so let it be known / irhabeeyeen [terrorists] ain’t wanted / No, no terrorists please.”

In the second verse, AJ explicitly labels Al-Qaeda members as “terrorists” and questions the group’s ideology: “Are they targeting ajanib [Westerners] or white T’s and blue jeans?”

Adopting an instructive tone, he tells Yemenis, “You know if terrorists strike, hoo ihna thee nikhsar [we are the ones who lose].” The UK’s recent ban on direct flights from Yemen is perhaps one example of Yemen’s suffering as a result of terrorism.

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Zakaria Amara, the mastermind of a 2006 terrorist plot to bomb Toronto, has been given a life sentence by an Ontario judge, a punishment that represents the courtroom climax of the so-called “Toronto 18″ case.

Mr. Justice Bruce Durno’s decision is the stiffest punishment imposed in the terrorism conspiracy and also the stiffest punishment imposed to date under Canada’s antiterrorism laws, which Parliament passed in the aftermath of al-Qaeda’s 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States.

“What this case revealed was spine chilling,” said Judge Durno, stressing the case should bring the threat of terrorism home to Canadians.

“It cannot be said these things happen only in other countries,” he added as he read aloud his written decision. “These things happen here.”

Five years after New York’s World Trade Center towers were razed, a suburban gas station attendant, then barely out of his teens, was inspired by al-Qaeda to follow suit.

Mr. Amara, a Cypriot-Jordanian who had immigrated to Canada in his early teens, hoped to shock Parliament into pulling Canada’s soldiers from Afghanistan.

Police had Mr. Amara under constant surveillance in Mississauga during the months leading up to his arrest, catching him in a relentless pursuit of a singular goal: He wanted to build truck bombs and explode them in downtown Toronto.

The RCMP, the federal police agency that spent millions pursuing the case, ultimately used an expensive sting operation to ensnare Mr. Amara and his accomplices – paying two Muslim infiltrators millions to unfurl the plot.

“Zakaria Amara did not just commit a criminal offence. He committed a terrorist offence that would have had catastrophic consequences,” said Judge Durno. “… He did not serve as a foot soldier but as a leader.”

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While dozens of reporters from different countries around the west arrive in Yemen every day to report on Al-Qaeda in Yemen, a prominent figure of Salafism in Yemen, Sheik Mohamed Al-Baidani, stated that cracking Al-Qaeda down cannot be done militarily.

And although he admitted an Al-Qaeda presence in Yemen, he said that Al-Qaeda in Yemen no longer counts many members.

The Sheikh Mohamed Al-Baidani, who is a prominent figure of Salafism in Yemen, released this statement today in an interview with the ABC, a Spanish news paper.

“Al-Qaeda in Yemen now does not have many members and they are only now hundreds of young people,” he said. “The Yemeni state can arrest them at any time and bring them to courts.”

“The using of Al-Qaeda by the Yemeni government in picturing it as a growing movement in Yemen is merely a political ploy by the Yemeni regime to get financial assistance from the west,” he said. “The Yemeni regime now is suffering from huge economic obstacles and during the past decades was not able to meet the development demands that the Yemenis look for, so now it resorts to [blaming] Al-Qaeda,” he said.

He warned the United States of America (USA) of having any military intervention in Yemen under the pretext of combating terrorism.

Read more here.

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The wife of the man who killed seven CIA operatives in Afghanistan spoke to the Turkish press on Wednesday evening, expressing surprise at the events and disbelief over some of the theories surrounding her husband’s connections, reports Today’s Zaman.

Defne Bayrak, the Turkish wife of Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, told Turkish media by telephone she was shocked at the news that her husband blew himself up at a base in Afghanistan on Dec. 30, killing himself and the CIA officers. Al-Balawi, a graduate of İstanbul University’s Çapa medical school, was born into a middle-class Kuwaiti family, moving with his family to Jordan in 1977 after Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait. Al-Balawi moved to Turkey in 1996 to attend medical school; Bayrak and al-Balawi were introduced by a mutual friend in 2001, and the two married, moving to Jordan in 2002 after al-Balawi graduated.

Bayrak, who lives in İstanbul, said her husband had plans to become a surgeon in Turkey and doubts he was working for the CIA. “I’ve read in newspapers the claims that he was connected to al-Qaeda or the CIA; I absolutely don’t believe in any such connection. My husband couldn’t be an agent. He was devoted to his family; he was a good father. He didn’t even like to leave the house much.”

Bayrak, an Arabic language translator for some Turkish media outlets, confirmed that al-Balawi was jailed for three days last March and left Jordan shortly after that, saying he was going to Pakistan to become a surgeon. After those plans did not work out, al-Balawi said he got another job there, Bayrak said.

Bayrak and her two daughters left Jordan in October and now live in İstanbul. “I was shocked when I heard the news [of the Afghanistan bombing] because he constantly spoke about coming to Turkey. … I was not expecting it,” she said.

“We had a very happy marriage. … I last saw my husband in person on March 18, and we last spoke by telephone a month ago. We had also last communicated via the Internet about 10 days ago. He didn’t mention anything out of the ordinary; he was fine. I was shocked when I heard about the [Afghanistan bombing]. … Our pain is great. My two daughters still don’t know their father is dead; I don’t know how to tell them,” she said.

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Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned Yemen’s attempt to use the current anti-terror  climate to subject journalists to censorship and banning publications, the Yemen Times has learned.

“Ali Abdallah Saleh’s government is taking advantage of support from foreign powers in the fight against terrorism on its soil to deliberately violate people’s rights”, said the organization.

“The international community must remind the Sana’a government that the legitimate fight against terrorism can never be used to justify cracking down on the media”, it said.

The condemnation came while Yemeni police  Wednesday arrested  on Wednesday the owner and editor of the banned daily newspaper, Al-Ayyam, following clashes between police and armed people who staged sit in outside the newspaper’s office. They called for the newspaper to reopen, which has been banned  by the Yemeni authorities since May.

Hisham Bashraheel, 66, was taken into custody over clashes since Monday in which a policeman and a newspaper ‘s guard were killed and seven people were wounded.

The Police attempted to storm the offices of Al-Ayyam daily  on Tuesday  to arrest guards who had killed a policeman and wounded another on Monday when security forces were trying to disperse a demonstration protesting the continued ban of the newspaper.

According to Gen.Saleh Zuari, the Deputy Interior minister, armed members of Al-Qaeda-linked southern movement exchanged fire with police on Monday, killing the policemen. Zuari added that 40 members of the movement armed with  Kalashnikov rifles and inguinal LG were hold up at newspaper, owned by Hisham Bashrahil.  Rioters attacked the security personnel from the headquarters of the news paper. “That is a blatant criminal act” described Zuari

However the Editor Bashrahil  has described  the scene – before his arrest- to Reporters Without Borders: “The security forces started firing on the crowd at 16.07pm. The police even aimed at one of their own number to make it look like the demonstrators were armed, when in fact everyone came to protest peacefully”.

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The Cuban Interests Section in Washington said that the Cuban government is cooperating in the international fight against terrorism and rejected the fact that the United States includes the country on its list of states that sponsor terrorism.

Cuba, spokesman Alberto Gonzalez told Efe, “has complied, is complying and will comply with the internationally recognized security measures for these cases.”

Gonzalez insisted that Cuba, in any case, “does not recognize any moral authority of the U.S. government to certify its inclusion and that of the Cubans on this type of list.”

After the failed Christmas Day attack on a flight over Detroit, the United States increased security checks on international passengers, in particular those arriving from Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria, whose governments Washington accuses of sponsoring terrorism.

It is also subjecting to greater scrutiny in airports those passengers from “countries of interest,” including Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.

Spokesman Gonzalez said that Cuba “has a perfectly clean service record in this area. Cuban territory has never been used to organize, finance or execute terrorist acts against the United States of America or any other state.”

Along those lines, he said that the inclusion of Cuba on the black list has a political character because the government in Washington “cannot cite a single terrorist act or intention that has come from Cuban territory.”

On the contrary, he continued, Cuba has been “the victim of violence and terrorism” by people such as Luis Posada Carriles, who is accused by Havana of the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.

Posada is currently living in the United States and Washington has ignored a Venezuelan request for his extradition in the airliner bombing, though he does face lesser charges in the United States for perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly lying to immigration authorities about his past activities.

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The 28-year-old Somali who attacked the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard was recently in prison for seven weeks in Kenya, reports Denmark’s Politiken.

The formal reason for his incarceration was that a Kenyan police checkpoint found him without travel documents.

At the time of his arrest, Kenyan police was investigating reports of plans to carry out a terrorist attack against, among others, the American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was due in the country.

The Kenyan media has linked the man’s arrest with the terrorist plans, a link that intelligence sources have confirmed. The Danish Security and Intelligence Service has previously said in a release that the man ‘is suspected of having been involved in terror-related activities during his time in East Africa’.

In Kenya, Denmark’s Ambassador Bo Jensen has declined to confirm or deny Politiken’s information that the Danish-Somali who has now been remanded in custody in the Westergaard case, is identical with the man who was detained in Kenya.

But he says that it is highly unusual to be detained in prison for seven weeks as a result of problems with a passport.

Read more here.

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