Afgans demand death penalty for translating the Koran

Pat Dollard | Young Americans | Blog Archive » Afghans Demand Death Penalty For Arrested Publisher Of New Koran

More than 1,000 angry Muslims demonstrated in eastern Afghanistan Sunday to demand the death penalty for an official accused of insulting the Koran, police and witnesses said.

The attorney general’s spokesman, former journalist Mohammad Ghaws Zalmai, was arrested at the Pakistan border a week ago trying to flee after being accused of misinterpreting the Muslim holy book in a new translation.

“Death to Ghaws Zalmai!” shouted the angry mob in the eastern town of Jalalabad, an AFP reporter in the crowd said. “We want him hanged!”

“He has insulted our religion and must be killed,” the group said.

The demonstrators blocked a main road linking the eastern town to the capital, Kabul, for several hours. Dozens of police officers were on hand to prevent violence.

The conservative parliament last week banned Zalmai from leaving the country days after the distribution of about 6,000 copies of his Dari-language translation, called “Koran-i-Pak” or “clean Koran”.

A commission of clerics and prosecutors is examining the text, which does not include the original Arab verses and is said to differ on several issues, including homosexuality and adultery.

Zalmai is meanwhile being interrogated and police are searching for a cleric who approved his version, said Abdul Rauf Arab, an official in the attorney general’s office.

The Afghan branch of the International Federation of Journalists has said its information was that Zalmai, president of a media union, was accused of not having his version of the holy book certified by an authorised scholar.

hattip to avideditoria.com

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59 children killed in Mohammedian bombing.

The Associated Press: 59 Schoolchildren Killed in Afghan Blast

Dozens of schoolchildren and five teachers were among those killed in a suicide attack in northern Afghanistan earlier this week — the country's deadliest since the fall of the Taliban — the government said Friday.

The 59 schoolchildren had lined up to greet a group of lawmakers visiting a sugar factory in the northern province of Baghlan on Tuesday when a suicide bomber detonated explosives.

"The education minister has ordered that no children should be ever again be used in these sort of events," said Zahoor Afghan, an Education Ministry spokesman. He said the children ranged in age from 8 to 18.

In all, the explosion claimed the lives at least 75 people, including several parliamentarians, and wounded 96. It was the deadliest attack in the country since the toppling of Taliban regime from power in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

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89,000 more Afghan children alive this year because of improved health care

89,000 more Afghan children alive this year because of improved health care

Six years after the Taliban's ouster, medical care in Afghanistan has improved such that 89,000 children who would have died before age 5 in 2001 will survive this year, President Hamid Karzai said Sunday. Saddled for years with one of the world's worst records on child health, Afghanistan has seen access to health care rise dramatically since the U.S.-led invasion. Thousands of clinics have been built across the country, and the Afghan government and aid agencies have trained tens of thousands of doctors, vaccinators and health volunteers who now reach into some of the country's most remote areas.

The under-five child mortality rate in Afghanistan has declined from an estimated 257 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2001 to about 191 per 1,000 in 2006, a 25 per cent drop, the Ministry of Public Health said, relying on a new study from Johns Hopkins University.

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'The Taliban said God himself would ignite the vest. I did not have to do anything.'

TorontoSun.com - Salim Mansur - Get tough on suicide bombings

A recent story in The Times of London reveals how utterly despicable are the folks who plan and execute suicide bombings.

Two 17-year-old peasant boys from the wilds of northwest Pakistan failed in their mission to kill the pro-West governor of Jalalabad, an Afghan border town. Farman Ullah, the suicide bomber, and his accomplice, Abdul Quboshi, instead were captured.

Times writer Robert Baer got to interview both captives. The peasant boys told their captors they believed virgins would be waiting for them at the site of the explosion and escort them to Paradise.

These captives -- their illiterate minds twisted by handlers recruiting them -- were programmed human bombs.

Baer writes: "But Farman's fanatic certainty about his scheduled appointment with the virgins of Paradise was not enough for his Taliban trainers. Attached to Farman's suicide bomb vest was a radio transmitter. If Farman's nerve failed or something went wrong, Abdul Quboshi's job was to press the detonator. As Farman told me: 'The Taliban said God himself would ignite the vest. I did not have to do anything.'"

Western democracies are confounded by the evil of suicide bombing. There seems to be no proportionate measure available at hand, or devised, to eradicate the plague of suicide bombings that result in disproportionate casualties and widespread fear.

One practical response is to have democratic governments make suicide bombing a criminal offence, then prosecute with the state's full resources those who belong to, or associate with, the network of Islamist terror (and any other network of terror) that provides ideological training, material and logistic support to recruits like Farman Ullah.

It is to this purpose that Liberal Senator Jerry Grafstein recently moved, for the third time, a private member's bill -- Parliament being dissolved and then prorogued required the bill to be submitted again -- in the upper chamber to amend section 83.01 of the Criminal Code to include, for greater certainty, suicide bombing in the definition of terrorist activity.

In introducing the Senate bill S-210 Grafstein observed, "Reverence for life is a lynchpin of all religions and the keystone of the rule of law. All our laws are wrapped around this central idea."

Criminal law provides for the prosecution of those who engage in misconduct. But Grafstein also reminds us of criminal law being a deterrent, making it known that "if you do this, you will have the full power of the state brought against you."

To those who argue that a suicide bomber in consummating his mission is unavailable for prosecution, Grafstein responds: "A successful suicide bomber cannot be prosecuted. However, one can certainly prosecute those who would aid and conspire with him or her, those who taught and applaud the action."

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Rudolf Blechschmidt's story of being a hostage of the Taliban.

International Security - Emerging Threats - Analysis - UPI.com

A German man who was the Taliban's hostage for three months has for the first time spoken about his ordeal. It's a tale of terrorism, corruption and psychological warfare up in the mountains of Afghanistan, where the Taliban, and not the Western forces, call the shots.

On Oct. 10, Rudolf Blechschmidt, a German engineer, was freed together with his five Afghan co-workers after a three-month hostage ordeal in Afghanistan.

Blechschmidt, 62, was one of two German engineers working on reconstruction projects who were kidnapped along with their Afghan co-workers on July 18 in Wardak province, southwest of Kabul. The other German engineer was shot during the kidnapping.

After the German’s construction company had gotten a job to reconstruct a dam in Afghanistan’s Wardak province, Blechschmidt and his colleague, Ruediger Diedrich, 43, wanted to see the dam before signing the papers; they asked for a police escort and after initial refusals finally got 10 police armed with AK-47 rifles. Yet when a group of Taliban surrounded them and took the Germans and their Afghan co-workers hostage, the police merely watched.

"They knew that foreigners who probably had money were coming to repair the dam," he told Stern. The Taliban then drove the eight hostages into the mountains, where they endured severe beatings and abuses. To this day, Blechschmidt has trouble hearing.

"I told Diedrich: 'You have to drink your urine.' I did it myself," he said. "And because it was so cold at night, I told him, 'Didi, we’ll hug each other and warm ourselves.'"

While Diedrich became increasingly weak, the Taliban refused to call a doctor. And it’s the account surrounding his colleague’s death when Blechschmidt has trouble keeping his voice.

Two days after they were kidnapped, a young Taliban fighter shot Diedrich when he refused to keep walking.

He added the fighters got a cell-phone call every morning from their Taliban leadership, waking them up when it was time to pray.

"They had the best photo camera cell phones," Blechschmidt said. "They showed us a video clip in which they cut an American’s throat. Because they don’t take prisoners, ‘We can’t take them with us,’ they said."

Meanwhile, a German special unit was trying together with Afghan officials to establish contact with the kidnappers, but according to officials, without success. Yet Blechschmidt claims a German diplomat prevented an earlier release.

He added the fighters got a cell-phone call every morning from their Taliban leadership, waking them up when it was time to pray.

"They had the best photo camera cell phones," Blechschmidt said. "They showed us a video clip in which they cut an American’s throat. Because they don’t take prisoners, ‘We can’t take them with us,’ they said."

Some of the Taliban wanted to move the German hostage to Helmand province, a sure death sentence.

Blechschmidt and his contact in the German special unit over the next days tried to convince the Afghan leadership, including President Hamid Karzai, to release the men in exchange for the hostages. But because of previous releases that had troubled Karzai, the president was unwilling to give in. Looming pressure from the German media (Blechschmidt called a radio station in Bavaria from a Taliban cell phone and told his story, which would have been aired after he hadn’t called for another two days), and a call from the German chancellor to Karzai, however, facilitated the final, successful prisoner exchange. After 84 days in captivity, Rudolf Blechschmidt was free at last.

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Taliban kills two children

Suicide bomber kills two children in Afghan south | International | Reuters

A Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up in southern Afghanistan on Friday, killing two children, local government officials said.

The attack came near the town of Sangin in the restive province of Helmand where mostly British troops are engaged in nearly daily firefights with Taliban insurgents. No foreign troops were wounded in the blast, a military spokesman said.

After suffering heavy casualties in conventional battles, Taliban rebels have grown increasingly reliant in the last two years on suicide attacks aimed at convincing ordinary Afghans their government and its Western backers cannot provide security.

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Please stop killing Muslims

U.N. says Afghan violence up 30 percent - Yahoo! News

Four children were among the 13 people killed in Tuesday's suicide attack by a man wearing a pakul — an Afghan hat commonly seen in the country's north — and a shawl around the upper half of his body called a chador, said Amin Gul, who owns a metalworking shop next to the blast site.

"When the bus came, an old man got on, then a woman with two children, then the guy wearing the chador entered, and then a big boom," said Gul, who witnessed the attack.

The seats in the front of the bus were covered in blood and small body parts, and workers washed blood from nearby trees after the attack. Ten people were wounded in the bombing, Health Minister Mohammad Amin Fatemi said.

Ahmad Saqi, a 20-year-old mechanic, said he helped put seven people in vehicles for runs to the hospital, and that several of the wounded had no legs.

"One woman was holding a baby in her arms, and they were both killed," Saqi said. "Half of the woman's face was blown off."

The blast killed eight police officers, the mother, her baby and another child, as well as two unaccompanied children who had been heading to a special school for handicapped students, Fatemi said. The children ranged in age from 2 to 8.

"The woman's husband is working at the Health Ministry. How do we tell the father his wife and two kids are dead?" asked Fatemi. "This attack goes against all of Islam. There is no reason to blow up Muslims, especially during the holy month of Ramadan. My message to these people: Please stop killing Muslims."

Note that he says "Muslims", not "people".

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More Religion of Peace craziness in Afghanistan

AFP: Taliban, Al-Qaeda 'wanted' as scores killed in Afghanistan

The teenage boy was hanged in the southern province of Helmand, one of the strongholds of the Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents, and a US bill stuffed into his mouth, an official said.

"Taliban simply hanged him because they found a five-dollar note in his pocket," Sangin district governor Mohammad Wali told AFP.

"They said the boy was spying for foreign troops. But he was neither spying for foreign troops nor for us. He was just a kid."

The rebels also shot dead an elderly man from Sangin who had asked for government help to build a water channel, Wali said.

Also on Sunday, a man was beheaded in the eastern border province of Paktika, provincial police chief Farouq Sangari said, also blaming Taliban fighters.

Two children were killed and five wounded in the eastern province of Khost after playing a toy car that was really a bomb, provincial spokesman Wazir Padshah Mangal said.

He said authorities suspected the bomb may have been planted by insurgents because "the father of the kids is working for the government."

At least eight policemen were meanwhile killed in intense fighting with Taliban insurgents in the southern province of Ghazni that started late Sunday and continued into early Monday, provincial police chief Alishah Ahmadzai said.

In Helmand, US-led coalition troops along with Afghan forces killed more than 20 Taliban rebels in an early morning raid on a suspected rebel hideout. Two more were killed in Zabul province and seven captured, the coalition said.

In adjoining Uruzgan province, soldiers were ambushed by more than 30 insurgents Monday and repelled the attack with return fire and air strikes, killing "numerous insurgents," a coalition statement said.

Separately, two Afghans working for a Danish non-governmental organisation was kidnapped Sunday in Logar, adjoining Kabul. A Bangladishi development worker was abducted in the same area September 15.

Three Afghan drivers of trucks supplying foreign military bases were kidnapped Monday in Wardak, also near Kabul, according to officials. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

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