NRO list out, 34 politicians among 8,000 beneficiaries
Nov 22, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan, pakistan politics
ISLAMABAD: A majority of the NRO beneficiaries have been bureaucrats and government officials as a list, released by the government on Saturday, contained names of only 34 politicians out of a total of 8,000.
According to the list, almost 97 per cent of the beneficiaries are from Sindh. The ordinance will lapse on Nov 28 in the light of the Supreme Court’s July 31 verdict in the PCO judges case.
The list shows that a total of 8,041 people — 7,793 from Sindh — have benefited from the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), promulgated by former president Pervez Musharraf on Oct 5, 2007.
These people have got withdrawn 3,478 cases (3,320 in Sindh) registered against them on charges of corruption, financial bungling, misuse of authority and criminal charges.
Gen (retd) Musharraf promulgated the NRO after striking a deal with PPP leader Benazir Bhutto in order to grant amnesty to all those against whom politically-motivated cases were registered between Jan 1, 1986, and Oct 12, 1999.
Mohammad Afzal Sindhu, the Minister of State for Law and Justice, released the list at a news conference soon after a meeting with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
In reply to a question, the minister said the government would not defend or protect any NRO beneficiary.
Earlier this month, the PPP had to withdraw its earlier initiative of presenting the NRO before parliament following a vociferous protest by the opposition and the decision of all its major coalition partners not to support the bill in the legislature.
The NRO is among the 37 ordinances about which the Supreme Court, in its July 31 verdict, had decreed that their fate should be decided by parliament within 120 days.
There are no surprises in the list as most of the prominent names had already appeared in the national press over the past few days.
Interestingly, the list provided by the minister contained the breakdown of only those withdrawn cases that pertained to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement. The document is silent about the number of cases registered against other beneficiaries.
The minister said there were only 34 politicians among the NRO beneficiaries, belying the insinuation that it was the politicians who had benefited the most from the amnesty.
Mr Sindhu said President Asif Zardari enjoyed indemnity under Article 248 of the Constitution and no new or old cases could be opened against him as long as he was in the Presidency.
‘In my opinion relief once granted cannot be reversed under the law. However, the government will implement the Supreme Court’s decision on the matter in letter and in spirit.’
He recalled that two petitions challenging the NRO were already pending before the apex court.
According to Mr Sindhu, several cases in Sindh were disposed of on the recommendations of a review board that had been set up under clause 2 of the NRO.
He said PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif had himself admitted that most of the cases against President Zardari and PPP leaders were politically-motivated.
The two parties had agreed in the Charter of Democracy, signed by Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif in 2006, to withdraw all politically-motivated cases. He said the name of the prime minister’s wife was not there in the list.
The list showed that MQM chief Altaf Hussain had got withdrawn the highest number of cases against him – 72, including 31 on murder and 11 on attempt to murder charges.
Dr Farooq Sattar, the MQM’s parliamentary leader, occupied the second slot. A total of 23 cases were withdrawn against him, including five on charges of murder and four on attempt to murder.
The third biggest beneficiary appeared to be provincial minister Shoaib Bukhari, of the MQM, against whom 21 cases were withdrawn, including 16 on murder and attempt to murder charges.
The Federal Minister for Ports and Shipping, Babar Ghouri, Sindh Governor Ishratul Ibad, Imran Farooq, Saleem Shahzad, Waseem Akhtar and former MNA Kunwar Khalid Yunus are other prominent MQM leaders who benefited from the NRO.
Among the beneficiaries belonging to People’s Party were Interior Minister Rehman Malik, Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, Nawab Yousuf Talpur, Mir Baz Khetran, Sindh provincial minister Agha Siraj Durrani and Senator Jehangir Badar.
Salman Farooqi, secretary-general to the president, Pakistan’s Ambassador in Washington Hussain Haqqani and Wajid Shamsul Hasan, High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, were prominent in the section that had names of individuals other than politicians.
Although PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif had been claiming that no member of his party had benefited from the NRO, the list showed that at least four PML-N members had got relief.
They are MNA Chaudhry Shaukat Ali, Rana Nazir Ahmed, former MNAs Chaudhry Abdul Hameed and Haji Kabir, and former MPA Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali.
Despite the official release of the list, a number of “beneficiaries” denied that they had taken any relief under the NRO.
The parliamentary leader of the MQM in the National Assembly and Federal Minister for Overseas Pakistanis announced that his party was ready to face all cases in courts.
Pakistan’s High Commissioner to UK Wajid Shamsul Hassan told a private TV channel that he was not an NRO beneficiary and that he would take up the matter with the prime minister.
Hussain Haqqani, the ambassador to Washington, also protested innocence. Senator Jehangir Badar, the PPP secretary-general, also contested the inclusion of his name.
The following is a list of other prominent NRO beneficiaries:
Nusrat Bhutto (PPP); Haji Nawaz Khokhar (former deputy speaker of National Assembly); Malik Mushtaq Awan (PPP); Mian Mohammad Rasheed; Tariq Anees; Anwar Saifullah Khan (MNA); Sardar Mansoor Leghari (ex-MNA); Aftab Sherpao (MNA); Habibullah Kundi (former NWFP minister); and Ahmed Sadiq (ex-principal secretary to PM).
Tags: 000 beneficiaries, 8, Benazir Bhutto, Mohammad Afzal Sindhu, Musharraf, NRO, PPP, Yousuf Raza Gilani.
Cheney ordered assassination of Benazir Bhutto: Hersh
May 19, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan, pakistan politics
Tuesday, 19 May, 2009
WASHINGTON: A special death squad assassinated Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on the orders of former US Vice-President Dick Cheney, claims an American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
Mr Hersh, a Washington-based journalist who writes for the New Yorker magazine and other prominent media outlets, also claims that former US Vice President Dick Cheney was running an ‘executive assassination ring’ throughout the Bush years. The cell reported directly to Mr Cheney.
In an interview to an Arab television channel, Mr Hersh indicated that the same unit killed Ms Bhutto because in an interview with al Jazeera TV on Nov. 2, 2007, she had said she believed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was already dead.
Ms Bhutto said she believed Omar Saeed Sheikh, an al Qaeda activist imprisoned in Pakistan for killing US journalist Daniel Pearl, murdered bin Laden.
But the interviewer, veteran British journalist David Frost, deleted her claim from the interview, Mr Hersh said.
The controversial US journalist told Gulf News on May 12 he believed Ms Bhutto was assassinated because the US leadership did not want bin Laden to be declared dead.
The Bush administration wanted to keep bin Laden alive to justify the presence of US army in Afghanistan to combat the Taliban, Mr Hersh said.
The Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist claimed that the unit also killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafique Al Hariri and the army chief of that country.
Mr Hariri and the Lebanese army chief were murdered for not safeguarding US interests and refusing to allow US to set up military bases in Lebanon. Ariel Sharon, the then prime minister of Israel, was also a key man in the plot, Mr Hersh said.
On March 11, Mr Hersh told a seminar at the University of Minnesota that the unit Mr Cheney headed was very deeply involved in extra-legal operations.
‘It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently,’ he explained. ‘They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. … Congress has no oversight of it.’
‘It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on,’ Mr Hersh stated. ‘Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.’
Although Mr Cheney had ignored such allegations in the past, recently he began responding to these charges, making counter allegations against the Obama administration.
Last week in particular, Mr Cheney appeared almost daily on popular talk shows and also delivered a formal address at the American Enterprise Institute on the importance of interrogation techniques widely considered to be torture.
Once known for his reticence and low profile, Mr Cheney has now become his party’s most audible voice.
Media commentators, however, attribute his sudden exuberance to the fear that if he did not defend himself, he may be prosecuted for authorising torture.
‘Mr Cheney knew, when he began his media assault, that the worst of the horrors inflicted upon detainees at his specific command are not yet widely known,’ said one commentator.
‘If the real stuff comes into full public light, he feared the general outrage will be so furious and all-encompassing that the Obama administration will have no choice but to … seek prosecutions of those Bush-era officials who specifically demanded those barbaric acts be inflicted upon prisoners.’
One blogger wrote that Mr Cheney not only authorised water-boarding, putting prisoners in confined spaces, pushing them, slapping them, putting bugs on them or demeaning them and their religious faith.
He quoted former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld telling a congressional panel in July of 2004 that if pictures of such acts were ‘released to the public, obviously it’s going to make matters worse.’
Mr Hersh recently gave a speech to the American Civil Liberties Union making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it.
Tags: Al-Qaeda, Benazir Bhutto, Bush years, Dick Cheney, Mr Hersh, osama bin laden
