Himu’s Window

Rab members last night arrested Chief Health Officer Rizvi Sultan and Store Keeper Afsar Ali when they went to Rab office with papers related to sale of anti-rabbit vaccines of the government, as Rab found evidence of irregularities in the papers.

Earlier in the day, Rab held Zillur Rahman, 55, of Wasenkola of Rajpara and Mohammad Khaibar, 54, of Ranibazar of Boalia thana, both are employees of RCC.

Rab members seized four vaccines from them and labels on those read, ‘For free distribution by Peoples Republic of Bangladesh Government, Not for Sale’.

A Rab press release said a citizen informed Rab officials at Rajshahi Railway Colony camp that RCC staff refused him anti-rabbit vaccines saying there was no vaccine when he went to RCC Bhaban as dog bit his son.

With the complaint, a team of Rab members went to RCC for buying the vaccine and they were also refused.

Later, the Rab members challenged two RCC staffs outside RCC Bhaban and found the four vaccines with them.

The two-day celebration, jointly organised by Bangladesh Abritti Samannoy Parishad, Rajshahi Abritti Parishad and cultural organisation Swanan, was held at Ghoramara Padma Mancha with the slogan “Jai, Alok Arunodoy, Jai”.

Individuals and different recitation forums from Naogaon, Bogra, Rangpur, Satkhira, Rajshahi and adjacent districts, participated in the programmes.

Renowned litterateurs Professor Hasan Azizul Haq and Ruhul Amin Pramanik inaugurated the festival.

“It is cultural identity that divides people into nations around the globe. People get a new lease of life observing festivals, celebrating their own cultures and heritage,” Professor Hasan said in his inaugural speech.

Professor Hasan then led a rally going through city streets heralding the celebration.

The festival celebration committee convenor Mohammad Kamal presided over the session. Among others attending the festival were Hasan Arif, assistant general secretary of Dhaka Sammilito Sangskritik Jote; Ahkamullah and Sharif Ahmed Bintu, secretary of Bangladesh Abritti Samannoy Parishad.

Later in the afternoon, Swanan units at Rajshahi University and Rangpur, Kathak of Nageswari and several individuals recited poems at the Padma Mancha.

Dristy of Bogra, Abritti Parshad of Naogaon, Sampratik Abritti Sangsad and Protiddhoni of Satkhira, Sundorom and Abritti Parishad of Rajshahi and others also presented recitals on April 28.

Some 70 participants took part at workshops during the two-day festival.

Similar poetry festivals were held at Monishura in Khulna division, Narayanganj in Dhaka division and will be held at Comilla in Chittagong region soon.

Mayor Minu gets anticipatory bail in extortion case

http://www.thedailystar.net/2007/04/30/d70430012617.htm
Unb, Dhaka

The High Court yesterday granted anticipatory bail for two months to Rajshahi City Mayor Mizanur Rahman Minu and two other BNP leaders in connection with an extortion case.

An HC division bench granted their prayer as they surrendered before

the court and sought bail.

On April 21, Shamsul Islam Khan, chairman of Evergreen Model College governing body, lodged the case against Minu and 10 others.

The bench, comprising Justice Nozrul Islam Chowdhury and Justice SM Emdadul Haque, upon a petition, passed the orders.

Advocate Khondaker Mahbubuddin Ahmed and Ruhul Quddus Kazal appeared for the petitioners.

Murder case against Patal filed

http://www.thedailystar.net/2007/04/30/d70430013121.htm

Unb, Natore

A murder case was filed in Natore against former state minister Fazlur Rahman Patal and 16 BNP activists yesterday.

Basirun Nesa, wife of Amjad Hossain of Balitita Islampur in Lalpur upazila, filed the case with a Natore court accusing them of killing her son Shukur Ali on June 1 last year.

The petitioner said BNP cadres at the instance of Fazlur picked up her son and beat him mercilessly to death at Bulu chairman’s house in Chongdhupoil.

The court referred the case to Lalpur police for investigation.

Fazlur faces four criminal cases including murder, extortion and land grabbing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/world/middleeast/27iraq.html?th&emc=th

U.S. Officer Accused of ‘Aiding Enemy’ in Iraq

By DAMIEN CAVE

Published: April 27, 2007

BAGHDAD, April 26 — The American military has charged a top commander at its main detention center here with nine violations of military law, including “aiding the enemy,” a rare and serious accusation that could carry a death sentence.

According to a military statement released Thursday, the officer, Lt. Col. William H. Steele, provided aid to the enemy between Oct. 1, 2005, and Oct. 31, 2006, “by providing an unmonitored cellular phone to detainees” at Camp Cropper, an expansive prison near Baghdad International Airport that held Saddam Hussein before he was hanged.

Colonel Steele, who oversaw one of several compounds at Camp Cropper as commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment, was also charged with several counts of illegally storing and marking classified information; failure to obey an order; possession of pornographic videos; dereliction of duty regarding government funds; and conduct unbecoming of an officer — for fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee since 2005, and for maintaining “an inappropriate relationship” with an interpreter in 2005 and 2006.

There were no further details given to explain the circumstances of the accusations.

Military officials said that Colonel Steele was detained last month and was now in Kuwait awaiting a military hearing to determine whether the case would proceed. They emphasized that he should be presumed innocent.

“Is there enough evidence or information that this needs to go to a court-martial?” said Lt. Col. Josslyn L. Aberle, a military spokeswoman. “That’s where we’re at right now.”

Walter Huffman, a former Army judge advocate general and now the dean of the Texas Tech University law school, said that a death sentence was unlikely, because to convict Colonel Steele of the most severe form of aiding the enemy, prosecutors would have to show that he intentionally endangered American troops or missions. In this particular case, he added, that would mean proving that he knew the cellphone was being used to make calls that would put Americans at risk. “That is a difficult charge to prove,” he said.

Mr. Huffman, who emphasized that he had not seen the specific charges or details of Colonel Steele’s case, said the fraternization charge sounded as if it was not code for sex but rather a reference to the simple impropriety of regular contact with a detainee’s relative. That would take on added seriousness in a Muslim country, where speaking to young women outside of one’s family is considered highly inappropriate.

He added that Colonel Steele’s rank and supervisory role at Camp Cropper magnified the seriousness of the allegations. “He’s the person in charge of enforcing the rules at the prison,” Mr. Huffman said. “It makes it an even more egregious offense because of the context.”

Regardless of the outcome, the case amounts to another public relations bruise for the American detention system. Camp Cropper was meant to signify reform. It was expanded in recent years as a replacement for Abu Ghraib, where American jailers photographed themselves humiliating and torturing Iraqi prisoners, and it now holds about 3,000 people.

But it has had its share of problems. Several detainees there have died mysteriously in the past year, with the most recent death occurring April 4. The causes of death for these detainees are rarely divulged.

The arrests and treatment of detainees at Camp Cropper is also the subject of a lawsuit filed in 2006 by an American security contractor who said he was unjustly held and mistreated at the prison after acting as an informant for the F.B.I. in cases involving corruption within the contracting company he worked for. A second plaintiff with a similar claim added his name to the complaint in February.

Colonel Steele appears to be only the second American officer accused of collaborating with the enemy since the war in Iraq started four years ago.

In September 2003, Capt. James J. Yee, a Muslim chaplain at the Guantánamo detention center in Cuba, was accused of mutiny, sedition, aiding the enemy, adultery and possession of pornography. The military dropped all the criminal charges the following March, citing national security concerns that would arise from the release of evidence against him. A month later, Captain Yee’s record was wiped clean when an Army general dismissed his convictions for adultery and pornography.

In Washington on Thursday, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, told reporters that the violence of the war showed no signs of abating.

North of Baghdad, two Iraqi women and two children were believed to have been killed in an American airstrike that killed four insurgents, according to a military statement.

Soldiers were searching for car-bomb factories near Taji when they came under small-arms fire, the statement said. The soldiers called in an airstrike and later discovered all eight bodies at the destroyed building.

Citing the weapons in the building, a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, blamed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia for the women’s and children’s deaths.

The police said a suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle south of Khalis, in Diyala Province, on Thursday, killing six Iraqi policemen. The police said that four bodies showing signs of torture were also found nearby in a grove of palm trees.

In Baghdad, 26 bodies were found, a higher daily toll than in the first few weeks of the two-month-old security push, and roadside bombs, mortar attacks and car bombs across the capital killed at least 11 people and wounded scores more, according to an Interior Ministry official.

In northern Iraq, two suicide bombers detonated their explosives at an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party near Mosul, killing three people and wounding 13, according to the mayor of Tal Afar, a city about 30 miles to the south.

The police also said gunmen in Tikrit had stormed the home of Hashim al-Majeed, a cousin of Saddam Hussein, and shot and killed his wife and daughter. Mr. Majeed, who disappeared soon after Mr. Hussein’s ouster in 2003, was not at home.

Reporting was contributed by Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi, Qais Mizher and Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Baghdad, and by Paul von Zielbauer and Michael Moss in New York.

First Appeared in The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/world/middleeast/27iraq.html?th&emc=th

U.S. Officer Accused of ‘Aiding Enemy’ in Iraq

By DAMIEN CAVE

Published: April 27, 2007

BAGHDAD, April 26 — The American military has charged a top commander at its main detention center here with nine violations of military law, including “aiding the enemy,” a rare and serious accusation that could carry a death sentence.

According to a military statement released Thursday, the officer, Lt. Col. William H. Steele, provided aid to the enemy between Oct. 1, 2005, and Oct. 31, 2006, “by providing an unmonitored cellular phone to detainees” at Camp Cropper, an expansive prison near Baghdad International Airport that held Saddam Hussein before he was hanged.

Colonel Steele, who oversaw one of several compounds at Camp Cropper as commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment, was also charged with several counts of illegally storing and marking classified information; failure to obey an order; possession of pornographic videos; dereliction of duty regarding government funds; and conduct unbecoming of an officer — for fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee since 2005, and for maintaining “an inappropriate relationship” with an interpreter in 2005 and 2006.

There were no further details given to explain the circumstances of the accusations.

Military officials said that Colonel Steele was detained last month and was now in Kuwait awaiting a military hearing to determine whether the case would proceed. They emphasized that he should be presumed innocent.

“Is there enough evidence or information that this needs to go to a court-martial?” said Lt. Col. Josslyn L. Aberle, a military spokeswoman. “That’s where we’re at right now.”

Walter Huffman, a former Army judge advocate general and now the dean of the Texas Tech University law school, said that a death sentence was unlikely, because to convict Colonel Steele of the most severe form of aiding the enemy, prosecutors would have to show that he intentionally endangered American troops or missions. In this particular case, he added, that would mean proving that he knew the cellphone was being used to make calls that would put Americans at risk. “That is a difficult charge to prove,” he said.

Mr. Huffman, who emphasized that he had not seen the specific charges or details of Colonel Steele’s case, said the fraternization charge sounded as if it was not code for sex but rather a reference to the simple impropriety of regular contact with a detainee’s relative. That would take on added seriousness in a Muslim country, where speaking to young women outside of one’s family is considered highly inappropriate.

He added that Colonel Steele’s rank and supervisory role at Camp Cropper magnified the seriousness of the allegations. “He’s the person in charge of enforcing the rules at the prison,” Mr. Huffman said. “It makes it an even more egregious offense because of the context.”

Regardless of the outcome, the case amounts to another public relations bruise for the American detention system. Camp Cropper was meant to signify reform. It was expanded in recent years as a replacement for Abu Ghraib, where American jailers photographed themselves humiliating and torturing Iraqi prisoners, and it now holds about 3,000 people.

But it has had its share of problems. Several detainees there have died mysteriously in the past year, with the most recent death occurring April 4. The causes of death for these detainees are rarely divulged.

The arrests and treatment of detainees at Camp Cropper is also the subject of a lawsuit filed in 2006 by an American security contractor who said he was unjustly held and mistreated at the prison after acting as an informant for the F.B.I. in cases involving corruption within the contracting company he worked for. A second plaintiff with a similar claim added his name to the complaint in February.

Colonel Steele appears to be only the second American officer accused of collaborating with the enemy since the war in Iraq started four years ago.

In September 2003, Capt. James J. Yee, a Muslim chaplain at the Guantánamo detention center in Cuba, was accused of mutiny, sedition, aiding the enemy, adultery and possession of pornography. The military dropped all the criminal charges the following March, citing national security concerns that would arise from the release of evidence against him. A month later, Captain Yee’s record was wiped clean when an Army general dismissed his convictions for adultery and pornography.

In Washington on Thursday, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, told reporters that the violence of the war showed no signs of abating.

North of Baghdad, two Iraqi women and two children were believed to have been killed in an American airstrike that killed four insurgents, according to a military statement.

Soldiers were searching for car-bomb factories near Taji when they came under small-arms fire, the statement said. The soldiers called in an airstrike and later discovered all eight bodies at the destroyed building.

Citing the weapons in the building, a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, blamed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia for the women’s and children’s deaths.

The police said a suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle south of Khalis, in Diyala Province, on Thursday, killing six Iraqi policemen. The police said that four bodies showing signs of torture were also found nearby in a grove of palm trees.

In Baghdad, 26 bodies were found, a higher daily toll than in the first few weeks of the two-month-old security push, and roadside bombs, mortar attacks and car bombs across the capital killed at least 11 people and wounded scores more, according to an Interior Ministry official.

In northern Iraq, two suicide bombers detonated their explosives at an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party near Mosul, killing three people and wounding 13, according to the mayor of Tal Afar, a city about 30 miles to the south.

The police also said gunmen in Tikrit had stormed the home of Hashim al-Majeed, a cousin of Saddam Hussein, and shot and killed his wife and daughter. Mr. Majeed, who disappeared soon after Mr. Hussein’s ouster in 2003, was not at home.

Reporting was contributed by Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi, Qais Mizher and Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Baghdad, and by Paul von Zielbauer and Michael Moss in New York.

First Appeared in The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/world/middleeast/27iraq.html?th&emc=th

U.S. Officer Accused of ‘Aiding Enemy’ in Iraq

By DAMIEN CAVE

Published: April 27, 2007

BAGHDAD, April 26 — The American military has charged a top commander at its main detention center here with nine violations of military law, including “aiding the enemy,” a rare and serious accusation that could carry a death sentence.

According to a military statement released Thursday, the officer, Lt. Col. William H. Steele, provided aid to the enemy between Oct. 1, 2005, and Oct. 31, 2006, “by providing an unmonitored cellular phone to detainees” at Camp Cropper, an expansive prison near Baghdad International Airport that held Saddam Hussein before he was hanged.

Colonel Steele, who oversaw one of several compounds at Camp Cropper as commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment, was also charged with several counts of illegally storing and marking classified information; failure to obey an order; possession of pornographic videos; dereliction of duty regarding government funds; and conduct unbecoming of an officer — for fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee since 2005, and for maintaining “an inappropriate relationship” with an interpreter in 2005 and 2006.

There were no further details given to explain the circumstances of the accusations.

Military officials said that Colonel Steele was detained last month and was now in Kuwait awaiting a military hearing to determine whether the case would proceed. They emphasized that he should be presumed innocent.

“Is there enough evidence or information that this needs to go to a court-martial?” said Lt. Col. Josslyn L. Aberle, a military spokeswoman. “That’s where we’re at right now.”

Walter Huffman, a former Army judge advocate general and now the dean of the Texas Tech University law school, said that a death sentence was unlikely, because to convict Colonel Steele of the most severe form of aiding the enemy, prosecutors would have to show that he intentionally endangered American troops or missions. In this particular case, he added, that would mean proving that he knew the cellphone was being used to make calls that would put Americans at risk. “That is a difficult charge to prove,” he said.

Mr. Huffman, who emphasized that he had not seen the specific charges or details of Colonel Steele’s case, said the fraternization charge sounded as if it was not code for sex but rather a reference to the simple impropriety of regular contact with a detainee’s relative. That would take on added seriousness in a Muslim country, where speaking to young women outside of one’s family is considered highly inappropriate.

He added that Colonel Steele’s rank and supervisory role at Camp Cropper magnified the seriousness of the allegations. “He’s the person in charge of enforcing the rules at the prison,” Mr. Huffman said. “It makes it an even more egregious offense because of the context.”

Regardless of the outcome, the case amounts to another public relations bruise for the American detention system. Camp Cropper was meant to signify reform. It was expanded in recent years as a replacement for Abu Ghraib, where American jailers photographed themselves humiliating and torturing Iraqi prisoners, and it now holds about 3,000 people.

But it has had its share of problems. Several detainees there have died mysteriously in the past year, with the most recent death occurring April 4. The causes of death for these detainees are rarely divulged.

The arrests and treatment of detainees at Camp Cropper is also the subject of a lawsuit filed in 2006 by an American security contractor who said he was unjustly held and mistreated at the prison after acting as an informant for the F.B.I. in cases involving corruption within the contracting company he worked for. A second plaintiff with a similar claim added his name to the complaint in February.

Colonel Steele appears to be only the second American officer accused of collaborating with the enemy since the war in Iraq started four years ago.

In September 2003, Capt. James J. Yee, a Muslim chaplain at the Guantánamo detention center in Cuba, was accused of mutiny, sedition, aiding the enemy, adultery and possession of pornography. The military dropped all the criminal charges the following March, citing national security concerns that would arise from the release of evidence against him. A month later, Captain Yee’s record was wiped clean when an Army general dismissed his convictions for adultery and pornography.

In Washington on Thursday, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, told reporters that the violence of the war showed no signs of abating.

North of Baghdad, two Iraqi women and two children were believed to have been killed in an American airstrike that killed four insurgents, according to a military statement.

Soldiers were searching for car-bomb factories near Taji when they came under small-arms fire, the statement said. The soldiers called in an airstrike and later discovered all eight bodies at the destroyed building.

Citing the weapons in the building, a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, blamed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia for the women’s and children’s deaths.

The police said a suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle south of Khalis, in Diyala Province, on Thursday, killing six Iraqi policemen. The police said that four bodies showing signs of torture were also found nearby in a grove of palm trees.

In Baghdad, 26 bodies were found, a higher daily toll than in the first few weeks of the two-month-old security push, and roadside bombs, mortar attacks and car bombs across the capital killed at least 11 people and wounded scores more, according to an Interior Ministry official.

In northern Iraq, two suicide bombers detonated their explosives at an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party near Mosul, killing three people and wounding 13, according to the mayor of Tal Afar, a city about 30 miles to the south.

The police also said gunmen in Tikrit had stormed the home of Hashim al-Majeed, a cousin of Saddam Hussein, and shot and killed his wife and daughter. Mr. Majeed, who disappeared soon after Mr. Hussein’s ouster in 2003, was not at home.

Reporting was contributed by Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi, Qais Mizher and Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Baghdad, and by Paul von Zielbauer and Michael Moss in New York.

First Appeared in The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/world/middleeast/27iraq.html?th&emc=th

U.S. Officer Accused of ‘Aiding Enemy’ in Iraq

By DAMIEN CAVE

Published: April 27, 2007

BAGHDAD, April 26 — The American military has charged a top commander at its main detention center here with nine violations of military law, including “aiding the enemy,” a rare and serious accusation that could carry a death sentence.

According to a military statement released Thursday, the officer, Lt. Col. William H. Steele, provided aid to the enemy between Oct. 1, 2005, and Oct. 31, 2006, “by providing an unmonitored cellular phone to detainees” at Camp Cropper, an expansive prison near Baghdad International Airport that held Saddam Hussein before he was hanged.

Colonel Steele, who oversaw one of several compounds at Camp Cropper as commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment, was also charged with several counts of illegally storing and marking classified information; failure to obey an order; possession of pornographic videos; dereliction of duty regarding government funds; and conduct unbecoming of an officer — for fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee since 2005, and for maintaining “an inappropriate relationship” with an interpreter in 2005 and 2006.

There were no further details given to explain the circumstances of the accusations.

Military officials said that Colonel Steele was detained last month and was now in Kuwait awaiting a military hearing to determine whether the case would proceed. They emphasized that he should be presumed innocent.

“Is there enough evidence or information that this needs to go to a court-martial?” said Lt. Col. Josslyn L. Aberle, a military spokeswoman. “That’s where we’re at right now.”

Walter Huffman, a former Army judge advocate general and now the dean of the Texas Tech University law school, said that a death sentence was unlikely, because to convict Colonel Steele of the most severe form of aiding the enemy, prosecutors would have to show that he intentionally endangered American troops or missions. In this particular case, he added, that would mean proving that he knew the cellphone was being used to make calls that would put Americans at risk. “That is a difficult charge to prove,” he said.

Mr. Huffman, who emphasized that he had not seen the specific charges or details of Colonel Steele’s case, said the fraternization charge sounded as if it was not code for sex but rather a reference to the simple impropriety of regular contact with a detainee’s relative. That would take on added seriousness in a Muslim country, where speaking to young women outside of one’s family is considered highly inappropriate.

He added that Colonel Steele’s rank and supervisory role at Camp Cropper magnified the seriousness of the allegations. “He’s the person in charge of enforcing the rules at the prison,” Mr. Huffman said. “It makes it an even more egregious offense because of the context.”

Regardless of the outcome, the case amounts to another public relations bruise for the American detention system. Camp Cropper was meant to signify reform. It was expanded in recent years as a replacement for Abu Ghraib, where American jailers photographed themselves humiliating and torturing Iraqi prisoners, and it now holds about 3,000 people.

But it has had its share of problems. Several detainees there have died mysteriously in the past year, with the most recent death occurring April 4. The causes of death for these detainees are rarely divulged.

The arrests and treatment of detainees at Camp Cropper is also the subject of a lawsuit filed in 2006 by an American security contractor who said he was unjustly held and mistreated at the prison after acting as an informant for the F.B.I. in cases involving corruption within the contracting company he worked for. A second plaintiff with a similar claim added his name to the complaint in February.

Colonel Steele appears to be only the second American officer accused of collaborating with the enemy since the war in Iraq started four years ago.

In September 2003, Capt. James J. Yee, a Muslim chaplain at the Guantánamo detention center in Cuba, was accused of mutiny, sedition, aiding the enemy, adultery and possession of pornography. The military dropped all the criminal charges the following March, citing national security concerns that would arise from the release of evidence against him. A month later, Captain Yee’s record was wiped clean when an Army general dismissed his convictions for adultery and pornography.

In Washington on Thursday, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, told reporters that the violence of the war showed no signs of abating.

North of Baghdad, two Iraqi women and two children were believed to have been killed in an American airstrike that killed four insurgents, according to a military statement.

Soldiers were searching for car-bomb factories near Taji when they came under small-arms fire, the statement said. The soldiers called in an airstrike and later discovered all eight bodies at the destroyed building.

Citing the weapons in the building, a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, blamed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia for the women’s and children’s deaths.

The police said a suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle south of Khalis, in Diyala Province, on Thursday, killing six Iraqi policemen. The police said that four bodies showing signs of torture were also found nearby in a grove of palm trees.

In Baghdad, 26 bodies were found, a higher daily toll than in the first few weeks of the two-month-old security push, and roadside bombs, mortar attacks and car bombs across the capital killed at least 11 people and wounded scores more, according to an Interior Ministry official.

In northern Iraq, two suicide bombers detonated their explosives at an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party near Mosul, killing three people and wounding 13, according to the mayor of Tal Afar, a city about 30 miles to the south.

The police also said gunmen in Tikrit had stormed the home of Hashim al-Majeed, a cousin of Saddam Hussein, and shot and killed his wife and daughter. Mr. Majeed, who disappeared soon after Mr. Hussein’s ouster in 2003, was not at home.

Reporting was contributed by Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi, Qais Mizher and Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Baghdad, and by Paul von Zielbauer and Michael Moss in New York.

First Appeared in The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/world/middleeast/27iraq.html?th&emc=th

U.S. Officer Accused of ‘Aiding Enemy’ in Iraq

By DAMIEN CAVE

Published: April 27, 2007

BAGHDAD, April 26 — The American military has charged a top commander at its main detention center here with nine violations of military law, including “aiding the enemy,” a rare and serious accusation that could carry a death sentence.

According to a military statement released Thursday, the officer, Lt. Col. William H. Steele, provided aid to the enemy between Oct. 1, 2005, and Oct. 31, 2006, “by providing an unmonitored cellular phone to detainees” at Camp Cropper, an expansive prison near Baghdad International Airport that held Saddam Hussein before he was hanged.

Colonel Steele, who oversaw one of several compounds at Camp Cropper as commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment, was also charged with several counts of illegally storing and marking classified information; failure to obey an order; possession of pornographic videos; dereliction of duty regarding government funds; and conduct unbecoming of an officer — for fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee since 2005, and for maintaining “an inappropriate relationship” with an interpreter in 2005 and 2006.

There were no further details given to explain the circumstances of the accusations.

Military officials said that Colonel Steele was detained last month and was now in Kuwait awaiting a military hearing to determine whether the case would proceed. They emphasized that he should be presumed innocent.

“Is there enough evidence or information that this needs to go to a court-martial?” said Lt. Col. Josslyn L. Aberle, a military spokeswoman. “That’s where we’re at right now.”

Walter Huffman, a former Army judge advocate general and now the dean of the Texas Tech University law school, said that a death sentence was unlikely, because to convict Colonel Steele of the most severe form of aiding the enemy, prosecutors would have to show that he intentionally endangered American troops or missions. In this particular case, he added, that would mean proving that he knew the cellphone was being used to make calls that would put Americans at risk. “That is a difficult charge to prove,” he said.

Mr. Huffman, who emphasized that he had not seen the specific charges or details of Colonel Steele’s case, said the fraternization charge sounded as if it was not code for sex but rather a reference to the simple impropriety of regular contact with a detainee’s relative. That would take on added seriousness in a Muslim country, where speaking to young women outside of one’s family is considered highly inappropriate.

He added that Colonel Steele’s rank and supervisory role at Camp Cropper magnified the seriousness of the allegations. “He’s the person in charge of enforcing the rules at the prison,” Mr. Huffman said. “It makes it an even more egregious offense because of the context.”

Regardless of the outcome, the case amounts to another public relations bruise for the American detention system. Camp Cropper was meant to signify reform. It was expanded in recent years as a replacement for Abu Ghraib, where American jailers photographed themselves humiliating and torturing Iraqi prisoners, and it now holds about 3,000 people.

But it has had its share of problems. Several detainees there have died mysteriously in the past year, with the most recent death occurring April 4. The causes of death for these detainees are rarely divulged.

The arrests and treatment of detainees at Camp Cropper is also the subject of a lawsuit filed in 2006 by an American security contractor who said he was unjustly held and mistreated at the prison after acting as an informant for the F.B.I. in cases involving corruption within the contracting company he worked for. A second plaintiff with a similar claim added his name to the complaint in February.

Colonel Steele appears to be only the second American officer accused of collaborating with the enemy since the war in Iraq started four years ago.

In September 2003, Capt. James J. Yee, a Muslim chaplain at the Guantánamo detention center in Cuba, was accused of mutiny, sedition, aiding the enemy, adultery and possession of pornography. The military dropped all the criminal charges the following March, citing national security concerns that would arise from the release of evidence against him. A month later, Captain Yee’s record was wiped clean when an Army general dismissed his convictions for adultery and pornography.

In Washington on Thursday, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, told reporters that the violence of the war showed no signs of abating.

North of Baghdad, two Iraqi women and two children were believed to have been killed in an American airstrike that killed four insurgents, according to a military statement.

Soldiers were searching for car-bomb factories near Taji when they came under small-arms fire, the statement said. The soldiers called in an airstrike and later discovered all eight bodies at the destroyed building.

Citing the weapons in the building, a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, blamed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia for the women’s and children’s deaths.

The police said a suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle south of Khalis, in Diyala Province, on Thursday, killing six Iraqi policemen. The police said that four bodies showing signs of torture were also found nearby in a grove of palm trees.

In Baghdad, 26 bodies were found, a higher daily toll than in the first few weeks of the two-month-old security push, and roadside bombs, mortar attacks and car bombs across the capital killed at least 11 people and wounded scores more, according to an Interior Ministry official.

In northern Iraq, two suicide bombers detonated their explosives at an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party near Mosul, killing three people and wounding 13, according to the mayor of Tal Afar, a city about 30 miles to the south.

The police also said gunmen in Tikrit had stormed the home of Hashim al-Majeed, a cousin of Saddam Hussein, and shot and killed his wife and daughter. Mr. Majeed, who disappeared soon after Mr. Hussein’s ouster in 2003, was not at home.

Reporting was contributed by Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi, Qais Mizher and Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Baghdad, and by Paul von Zielbauer and Michael Moss in New York.

First Appeared in The New York Times

Police last night pressed charges of aiding abetting militants of Jama’atul Mujahidin, Bangladesh against former post and telecommunication minister Barrister Aminul Haque, ex-deputy minister for land Ruhul Kuddus Talukhdar Dulu, former lawmaker Nadim Mostafa in two cases.

Other 54 persons were also accused of torture and extortion in the charge sheets that were submitted at the third court of first class magistrate in Rajshahi. The court will record the charges later.

SI Mukhtar Hossain accused 27 persons including Aminul, Rajshahi district BNP general secretary Shis Mohammad in the case lodged by torture victim Fazlur Rahman with Bagmara police station (PS) on March 30. In this case, police dropped name of Bangla Bhai, as he was hanged.

Sub inspector (SI) Shakil Hossain accused 30 persons including Aminul, Dulu, and Nadim in another case filed by torture victim Ayub Ali Pramanik with same PS on April 1.

“As the charges are pressed, arrest of the former BNP stalwarts became matter of time”, said a senior police officials adding that police is now waiting for ‘green signal’ of government high ups. However, Dulu was taken on jail custody on February 20.

Police mentioned in both the charges that allegations in the cases were found to be true in investigation.

Fazlur Rahman, a poor farmer of Hasanpur village in Bagmara alleged that he was kidnapped, tortured and forced to pay ransom for getting release from the militants in April 2004.

He said in the case that the militants beat him hanging upside down with a tree.

He alleged, Barrister Aminul and Shis Mohammad held meetings with JMJB leaders before tortures.

Another plaintiff Ayub alleged that he was waylaid on way to crop-field in the morning of April 7 in 2004. Armed militants led by killer Mostak’s father Abdul Jalil Amin asked him for toll of Tk 1 lakh.

Ayub quoted Abdul Jalil Amin as telling him during torture, “Police are not sufficient to curb outlaws. We are set to eliminate the terrorists. We need money to function. Our leaders identified you as rich man. So, you will have to pay us toll”.

Jalil named Aminul, Dulu and Nadim as their leaders and talked to the ministers and lawmakers on phone for convincing him to pay, he alleged.

He was tortured until he was agreed to pay toll and provided Tk 80,000 after his release.

http://www.indiaenews.com/india/20070423/48574.htm

Agra to host Bangladesh, Pakistan, India peoples’ meet

From correspondents in Uttar Pradesh, India, 04:00 PM IST

An organisation working towards ‘unification of the subcontinent’ and bringing the peoples of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan closer will meet in Agra in August to take forward the movement.
The Bangladesh-Pakistan-Bharat Peoples’ Forum, a leftist outfit, had held its last conference in November in Lucknow. It believes that the partition of the subcontinent was a ‘grave blunder’ and that there can be no peace in the subcontinent unless there is unification.
Forum national president Ram Kishore said Sunday evening that the ‘momentum for unification has to be maintained, rather stepped up to ensure peace and progress in the region which has seen many conflagrations in the past 60 years that have only helped the imperialist powers to entrench their tentacles’.
The Agra meet will be attended by members from the parallel organisations in the other two neighbouring countries.
Ram Kishore said the Lucknow declaration had demanded easing of the visa norms between the three countries, promotion of cultural and trade ties, opening up of communication facilities through reduction in tariff, academic collaboration and to significantly reduce budgetary allocations on defence.
‘Of late there have been some welcome shifts in perspectives and approaches of the various political parties in the subcontinent. This process of better understanding should be accelerated. Trade can be a major leveller, therefore business interests should be promoted,’ he said.
The forum wants the share markets of the three countries opened for cross border investors. It has also decided to jointly hold functions to mark the 250th year celebrations of the Battle of Plassey (June 23, 1757) along with the 1857 mutiny celebrations this year, Ram Kishore told IANS.
He warned of the increasing inroads corporate imperialism was making in all the three countries that were also facing grim challenges from fundamentalists. ‘Democracy and free society alone can address the twin problems of extremism and socio economic backwardness,’ he added.

http://www.indiaenews.com/india/20070423/48574.htm

Agra to host Bangladesh, Pakistan, India peoples’ meet

From correspondents in Uttar Pradesh, India, 04:00 PM IST

An organisation working towards ‘unification of the subcontinent’ and bringing the peoples of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan closer will meet in Agra in August to take forward the movement.
The Bangladesh-Pakistan-Bharat Peoples’ Forum, a leftist outfit, had held its last conference in November in Lucknow. It believes that the partition of the subcontinent was a ‘grave blunder’ and that there can be no peace in the subcontinent unless there is unification.
Forum national president Ram Kishore said Sunday evening that the ‘momentum for unification has to be maintained, rather stepped up to ensure peace and progress in the region which has seen many conflagrations in the past 60 years that have only helped the imperialist powers to entrench their tentacles’.
The Agra meet will be attended by members from the parallel organisations in the other two neighbouring countries.
Ram Kishore said the Lucknow declaration had demanded easing of the visa norms between the three countries, promotion of cultural and trade ties, opening up of communication facilities through reduction in tariff, academic collaboration and to significantly reduce budgetary allocations on defence.
‘Of late there have been some welcome shifts in perspectives and approaches of the various political parties in the subcontinent. This process of better understanding should be accelerated. Trade can be a major leveller, therefore business interests should be promoted,’ he said.
The forum wants the share markets of the three countries opened for cross border investors. It has also decided to jointly hold functions to mark the 250th year celebrations of the Battle of Plassey (June 23, 1757) along with the 1857 mutiny celebrations this year, Ram Kishore told IANS.
He warned of the increasing inroads corporate imperialism was making in all the three countries that were also facing grim challenges from fundamentalists. ‘Democracy and free society alone can address the twin problems of extremism and socio economic backwardness,’ he added.