Law & Paneir

A suicide bomber struck a busy railway station in southern Russia on Sunday, killing herself and at least 15 others and wounding scores more, officials said, in a stark reminder of the threat Russia is facing as it prepares to host February’s Olympics in Sochi. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing in Volgograd, but it came several months after Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov called for new attacks against civilian targets in Russia, including the Sochi Games. Suicide bombings have rocked Russia for years, but many have been contained to the Caucasus, the centre of an insurgency seeking an Islamist state in the region. Until recently Volgograd was not a typical target, but the city formerly known as Stalingrad has now been struck twice in two months — suggesting militants may be using the transportation hub as a renewed way of showing their reach outside their restive region. Volgograd, which borders the Caucasus, is 900 kilometres (550 m...

In today’s world where terrorism has become the essential ingredients of the news headlines, where we all are living on the edge of a blade-called terror. It can come in any form, be it a bomb blast, a land mine, a bullet from AK-47 or keeping hostages. The one thing which is common across the world of terrorism is the large involvement of youth. It is constantly been seen that a large number of young people specially the age group of 20 to 35 is playing this game of terror. This significant change is because it is very easy to change the bend of mind of these young people. The terror gurus take advantage of the conditions of these young men and with their evil preaching’s they brainwash them and force them into the ugly world of terror. Training: It is easy for them to train the young blood as the training involves a lot of physical exercise, mental stability and focus. These young people are highly brainwashed and they see all this as their holy ‘Jehad’ in the name...

An empty mind is a devil’s workshop so the saying goes. The youth of today has no work to do. It’s an age of recession and desperate for money they do whatever pays and what pays the most often makes you pay too. Youth, the most memorable time of a person’s life, the age at which one is the most active, the happiest and most carefree. They’ve got what people say ‘young blood’ running through their veins. They feel as if they can take over the world. And that’s what some of the youth really try to do. They try to take over the world and they don’t care if they die in the process. Terrorism in youth is increasing as we breathe. No one knows when they are going to work if they will come home safe. Let alone that, no one knows when they go to sleep will they even see them the next morning? It’s an unsafe world in which we are living now. And who is making it unsafe? This youth which has gotten it into its malleable brain that the whole world is its enemy and its only fri...

The word “Terrorism” which was originally coined to describe state action, undertaken to consolidate power or quell dissident movements has evolved over the years. Though the term “state terrorism” still holds currency, today, especially after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the whole notion of terrorism has tilted to an extreme side of the axis. Today terrorism is seen as a phenomena and the violence committed, described as a ‘terrorist act’ is said to be generally perpetrated by loosely organized groups or individuals which at best share a common and fanatical religious ideology. The common perceptions of terrorism could be described as a means to attain political goals which can not be achieved in a lawful or constitutional manner, part of a strategy, used tactically by organized groups and to create fear among ordinary citizens to further a cause. Addressing terrorism in legal terms is a very complex and challenging task, where differences of opinions and...

Definition: Extraordinary Rendition is the practice of transporting suspected foreign terrorists or other individuals suspected for crimes, to third countries for interrogation and imprisonment. The purpose of extraordinary rendition is to gather intelligence information from suspects, who are sent either to facilities maintained by the United States or put into the custody of foreign governments. Suspects are transported to countries where safeguards against torture and abusive treatment are looser than in the United States. Extraordinary rendition thus permits the torture and other practices of detained suspects, despite the fact that torture is illegal according to international law, under any circumstances. The covert practice of extraordinary rendition began in the 1990s. However, its increasing use for terrorism suspects since the 9/11 attacks has put it into public view. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, "The current policy traces its root...

After the 9-11 attacks against the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency conspired with dozens of governments to build a secret extraordinary rendition and detention program that spanned the globe. Extraordinary rendition is the transfer—without legal process—of a detainee to the custody of a foreign government for purposes of detention and interrogation. To date, the United States and the vast majority of the other governments involved—more than 50 in all—have refused to acknowledge their participation, compensate the victims, or hold accountable those most responsible for the program and its abuses. Here are 20 additional facts from the new report that expose just how brutal and mistaken the program was: At least 136 individuals were reportedly extraordinarily rendered or secretly detained by the CIA and at least 54 governments reportedly participated in the CIA’s secret detention and extraordinary rendition program; classified government documents may rev...

We may be finally learning more about the CIA's involvement in the 2003 abduction and rendition to torture of a Muslim cleric, Hassan Mustafa Nasr (aka Abu Omar). This week, Sabrina De Sousa confirmed that she was a former CIA undercover officer, and provided new details about events that led to the first (and, to date, only) prosecutions and convictions for abuses committed by U.S. officials as part of its "extraordinary rendition" program. Her account highlights the desperate need for the United States to thoroughly investigate the role of government officials in acts of torture and extraordinary rendition committed in the years following 9/11. In 2003, CIA agents seized Abu Omar from the streets of Milan, Italy and rendered him to Egypt for interrogation and torture by Egyptian officials. He was later released without charge or trial. In September 2012, Italy's highest court affirmed the in absentia convictions of 23 Americans, including De Sous...

A tortured Libyan man's bid to sue the UK government for allegedly colluding in his rendition cannot be settled in a UK court, the High Court rules. The judge said Abdul-Hakim Belhaj had a "well-founded claim" but pursuing it would jeopardise national security. Mr Belhaj says that, in 2004, the UK helped the US to arrange his rendition from China to Libya, where he says he was tortured. Mr Belhaj, speaking from Tripoli, said he would "continue to seek the truth". His solicitor, Sapna Malik, said Mr Belhaj would try to appeal against the decision. Mr Belhaj, the former leader of an Islamist group which fought the Gaddafi regime, says he was abducted - along with his pregnant wife - in China in 2004 as he was about to fly to London to claim asylum. He says the UK had tipped off Libya before helping the US to arrange his rendition.   'Non-justiciable' Then-Labour home secretary Jack Straw has denied being aware of the r...

As a High Court hearing on UK involvement in torture and rendition enters its third day, documents released detail the ordeal faced by the pregnant wife of a Gaddafi opponent during her 2004 ‘rendition.’ Fatima Boudchar and her husband Abdul-Hakim Belhadj are bringing a claim against the Government, MI6 and then-Foreign Secretary Jack Straw over their role in the kidnap and forcible transfer of the couple to Gaddafi’s prisons – in what has been described as the secret counterpart to Tony Blair’s ‘Deal in the Desert’ with the Libyan dictator. Court documents released today, prepared by the couple’s legal team and human rights charity Reprieve, describe how Ms Boudchar – who was heavily pregnant at the time – was blindfolded, taken to a cell and “chained to the wall by one hand and one leg,” before being “taped to a stretcher tightly making her fear for her baby” and forced on board a CIA jet. “Upon arrival in Tripoli,” they go on to say, “the First Claimant [Mr ...

by Michel Chossudovsky In 2000, the Taliban government under advice from the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) imposed a total ban on opium production. Prior to the ban, according to the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Afghanistan produced more than 70% of the world's opium in 2000, and about 80% of opiate products (meaning heroin) destined to the European market. The annual proceeds of the Afghan Golden Crescent drug trade (between 100 and 200 billion dollars) represented approximately one third of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $500 billion. In many regards, the trade in narcotics as well as the drug routes to the European and North American markets are considered to be "strategic". There are powerful financial interests behind the drug trade, which have a pervasive influence, behind the scenes, on the conduct of US foreign policy. These multibillion dollar revenues o...

By Pnina Werbner In my earlier essay posted on the SSRC website, I spoke of the “tragic predicament of a diaspora caught between deeply felt loyalties, at an historical moment not of its own making. Most British Muslims in the diaspora,” I commented, “witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center’s twin towers on television, sitting in their living rooms, with the same helpless sense of horror as Western spectators. As it emerged that an obscure Islamist, Osama Bin Laden, and his Al-Qaeda clandestine global network, were probably responsible for the devastation, it seemed that the clash of civilizations predicted by Huntington between Islam and the West had finally materialized. At that moment diaspora Muslims in the West became symbolic victims of a global mythology, caught in a spiral of alienation and ambivalent identifications that no local protestations of innocence could counter.” The events of September 11 were particularly tragic for the Pakistani diasp...

By Rajeev Bhargava The rest of the world should be grateful to Western civilization for having given it the concept of human rights. There are some things we cannot do to others, not because it is God’s command, because we will go to hell or earn spiritual demerit, but because of certain capacities that people possess. We cannot harm others because this is what we minimally owe them. This realization does not entail the idea of human rights as supreme, something over and above all other values in every context and at all times. It simply means that rights must always count as one of the most important considerations in our dealings with others. But how much easier it would be to make this claim more widely acceptable if it were made with humility, with better knowledge that other civilizations have given the West equally valuable ideas, and accompanied by an acknowledgment that the West has given us some horrible ideas—ethnic cleansing; general epistemic superiorit...