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News of Jan
6, 2007
Assam on Alert after 19 Hindi-speaking People Killed
Tinsukia (Assam), Jan 6
A maximum security alert has been sounded in Assam Saturday after a
string of overnight separatist attacks killed 19 Hindi-speaking
people and wounded 25, officials said.
"Security forces have been put on high alert across the state after
the attacks on innocent people by militants," Assam Chief Minister
Tarun Gogoi told IANS.
"Security offensives against the militants have been intensified,"
he added.
Police said suspected militants of the outlawed United Liberation
Front of Asom (ULFA) attacked Hindi-speaking migrant workers in six
separate locations in the eastern districts of Dibrugarh and
Tinsukia late Friday.
"The death toll could mount as we have reports of some more people
injured in remote areas," said Tinsukia district magistrate Absar
Hazarika.
Heavily armed ULFA rebels attacked two brick kilns, fired
indiscriminately on shops and businesses owned by Hindi-speaking
people, besides triggering an explosion near a tea garden.
"In all the incidents, the ULFA targeted Hindi-speaking people, most
of them daily wage earners and petty traders," a senior police
official said.
In 2000, ULFA militants killed at least 100 Hindi-speaking people in
Assam in a series of well-planned attacks after the rebel group
vowed to free the state of all "non-Assamese migrant workers".
"The immediate provocation for the attacks is the killing of five
senior ULFA leaders by counter-insurgency forces in separate
encounters in the past one week and the arrest of two of their
frontline leaders in raids," said Hazarika.
The attacks have triggered fear and panic among hundreds of Hindi
speakers, most of them working in brick kilns and doing odd jobs, in
Assam.
"We fear more such attacks and are really worried for our lives. We
have been residing in Assam for decades, but now we don't know
whether to stay put or flee to safer areas," said Rajesh Tiwari, a
coal trader in Tinsukia.
The ULFA is a rebel group fighting for an independent homeland since
1979.
"The attacks were reminiscent of the one we saw in 2000 and
therefore there is a sense of panic," said Hariprasad Gupta, another
trader in Tinsukia, originally hailing from the eastern state of
Bihar.
~*~
Authorities in the United States and the United Kingdom are facing
several hurdles as they crack down on a "pipeline" of operatives,
supporters and financiers that shuttles terrorists from Pakistan,
according to Newsweek.
This, the American newsmagazine reported in a web exclusive, became
apparent from the case of Mohammed al-Ghabra, a 26-year-old London
man who was named as a major organizer for Al Qaeda and other terror
groups, including Iraqi insurgents, by the Bush administration just
before Christmas.
In a statement accompanying its formal order freezing any US assets
Ghabra might control, US Treasury official Adam Szubin alleged that
the target of the sanctions "has backed Al Qaeda and other violent
jihadist groups, facilitating travel for recruits seeking to meet
with Al Qaeda leaders and taken part in terrorist training."
The Treasury statement also accused Ghabra of maintaining contact
with UK- ased jihadists involved in the radicalization of British
Muslims through the dissemination of "extremist" media; Ghabra was
also accused of training at a terror camp in Kashmir run by a
jihadist group called Harakat Ul-Mujahidin.
Ghabra, it said, also "facilitated the travel of UK-based
individuals to Iraq" to support insurgents there and that Ghabra met
in Pakistan with alleged Al Qaeda operatives, including the group's
one-time chief of operations (who later was captured by the
Pakistanis).
Some of the would-be terrorists that Ghabra allegedly helped travel
to Pakistan subsequently returned to the UK to "engage in covert
activity on behalf of Al Qaeda."
During a visit to Pakistan in 2002, Ghabra himself allegedly met
with and stayed at the home of Abu Faraj al-Libi, who at the time
was believed to have succeeded 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed as Al Qaeda chief of operations, it said.
The information that the US Treasury Department made public in its
announcement freezing Ghabra's assets certainly appears to affirm
his role as an alleged terrorist fixer, Newsweek said, but suggested
it had left out a potentially important detail: British authorities
have already attempted-unsuccessfully-to prosecute him on
terror-related charges.
Newsweek said a spokeswoman for Britain's Crown Prosecution Service
had confirmed that in 2004, a London jury acquitted Ghabra of fraud
and terror charges. Court officials confirmed that records show
Ghabra was acquitted on charges of conspiracy to defraud and
possession of a document or record that could be useful to
terrorists.
US and UK officials, who asked for anonymity because they were
discussing sensitive material, said that since his acquittal, Ghabra
has been a free man living in Britain, the magazine said.
Newsweek cited a US intelligence official as saying that US agencies
do not necessarily believe that Ghabra is dangerous or violent
himself; but he is regarded as a "key cog" and a serious "player" in
an alleged human pipeline that ranges for alienated British
Muslim youths-many of them born in the UK of Pakistani heritage-to
travel to Pakistan for indoctrination and training at temporary
terrorist "camps" believed to be operated by Al Qaeda leaders.
US authorities say the UK-Pakistan pipeline has played a role in
several planned terrorist plots, including the alleged plot last
summer to blow up airliners flying between the Britain and the
United States.
At least two of the four suicide bombers who blew themselves up on
London underground trains and a bus on July 7, 2005, are believed to
have visited Pakistan in the years and months before they committed
their attacks.
The US intelligence official, as well as a source familiar with
British intelligence reporting, said that agencies on both sides of
the Atlantic had information linking Ghabra to some of the
well-known plots, Newsweek said.
IANS
News of Jan
6, 2007
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