Spain arrests seven over links to Mumbai attacks

By Teresa Larraz, writing Nigel Davies, editing by Tim Pearce | Reuters – Wed, Dec 1 7:09 PM IST

http://beta.in.news.yahoo.com/spain-arrests-seven-over-links-mumbai-attacks.html

MADRID (Reuters) – Seven men have been arrested in Barcelona, accused of providing fake identification documents to al Qaeda-linked groups including the one that carried out the Mumbaiattacks in 2008, the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.

Six Pakistanis and one Nigerian were arrested on Tuesday and early Wednesday accused of stealing passports and other travel documents from tourists in Barcelona and sending them toThailand where they were falsified and passed to extremist organised crime groups, it said in a press release.

Among the groups the documents were sent to was the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was blamed for the attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 in which 166 people were killed, as well as Sri Lanka’s separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The ministry said the arrests were part of an international operation in which two Pakistanis and one Thai were also arrested in Thailand, accused of leading the group set up in Spain and other European countries.

The ministry said the group robbed people whose age and nationality enabled members of the militant groups holding the falsified documents to travel freely across borders.

“This large-scale operation neutralises an important cell providing passports to al Qaeda, weakening the falsification apparatus of this organisation at an international level, and as such its operational capabilities,” the ministry said.

Spanish police recovered numerous identification documents in the homes of those arrested, as well as hard discs, memory sticks, 50 mobile phones and SIM cards, and cash in dollars, euros, and British pounds.

(Reporting by Teresa Larraz, writing Nigel Davies, editing by Tim Pearce)

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India incapable of quick strike against Pak, US believes

Yahoo! India News – Thu, Dec 2 11:59 AM IST

http://beta.in.news.yahoo.com/india-incapable-of-quick-strike-against-pak–us-believes.html

America suspects India is not agile enough to launch a concerted military attack against Pakistan, Wikileaks cables disclosed on Wednesday. The disclosures also underlined contradictions between what America tells India and what it puts down on its internal records.

America feels it would take India 72 hours to mobile its military resources and launch an attack against Pakistan. Its ambassador to India describes India’s process of mobilisation as “slow and lumbering”.

Officially, Pakistan and America were talking about reining in militant groups after the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament, and again after the 2008 attack on Mumbai, but America had no hope that any good would come of it.

The US ambassador to Pakistan had told her state department in 2009 that generous aid would not help in convincing Pakistan to stop supporting the Taliban and the Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Telegraphreports: “There is no chance that Pakistan will view enhanced assistance levels in any field as sufficient compensation for abandoning support to these groups, which it sees as an important part of its national security apparatus against India. The only way to achieve a cessation of such support is to change the Pakistan government’s own perception of its security requirements,” she wrote.

Pakistan had received more than 16 billion dollars in American aid since 2001. In other words, the Americans were trying to buy peace from Pakistan while being fully aware that they were up against a stubborn supporter of extremist groups.

Disclosures on Wednesday also indicated that the US thought the Indian army had been slow to respond to the parliament attack: … India commenced ‘Cold Start’, a military doctrine developed by Armed Forces, which involves joint operations between Army, Navy, and Air Force, after 2001 Parliament attack but the Army was not able to execute it properly.

The cables sent by US ambassador to India Timothy Roemor on Feb 16, 2010 said that, “Indian forces could have significant problems consolidating initial gains due to logistical difficulties and slow reinforcement.”

Pakistan’s hypocrisy was well in evidence even earlier this year. In April, its prime minister Gilani promised he would act firmly against anti-India groups in his country. In June, the US kept up the pretense that Pakistan could be persuaded to stop supporting deadly groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

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Assange’s legal options narrow

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER and MALIN RISING, Associated Press – 1 hr 32 mins ago

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101202/ap_on_bi_ge/wikileaks

 

LONDON – Julian Assange’s legal options narrowed Thursday as the WikiLeaks founder lost an appeal against a court order for his arrest and his British lawyer said authorities knew his precise location.

Sweden’s Supreme Court upheld a order to detain the 39-year-old Australian for questioning over allegations of rape and sexual molestation that could lead to his extradition. The former computerhacker has been out of the public eye for nearly a month, although attorney Mark Stephens insisted that authorities knew how to find him.

“Both the British and the Swedish authorities know how to contact him, and the security services know exactly where he is,” Stephens told The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, cables published to WikiLeaks’ website detailed alleged financial support for North Korea and terrorist affiliates by Austrian banks; an allegation by a Pakistani official that Russia “fully supports” Iran’s nuclear program; and a deeply unflattering assessment of Turkmenistan’s president.

Accused in Sweden of rape, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of unlawful coercion, Assange’s last public appearance was at a Geneva press conference on Nov. 5.

Swedish officials have alerted Interpol and issued a European arrestwarrant in a bid to bring him back in for questioning. Stephens, Assange’s lawyer, said that the Swedish prosecution was riddled with irregularities and turning into an exercise in persecution.

Assange denies the charges, and Stephens has said they apparently stemmed from a “dispute over consensual, but unprotected sex.”

It is unclear if or when police would act on Sweden’s demands. Police there acknowledged Thursday they would have to refile their European arrest warrant after British authorities asked for more details on the maximum penalties for all three crimes Assange is suspected of.

Scotland Yard declined comment, as did the Serious and Organized Crime Agency, responsible for processing European arrest warrants for suspects in England — where The Guardian claims Assange is hiding out.

Stephens — who also represents The Associated Press — said that, if Assange were ever served with a warrant, he would fight it in British court.

“The process in this case has been so utterly irregular that the chances of a valid arrest warrant being submitted to me are very small,” he said.

WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said late Wednesday the organization was trying to keep Assange’s location a secret for security reasons. He noted commentators in the United States and Canada had called for Assange to be hunted down or killed.

Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Bjorn Hurtig, wasn’t immediately available for comment.

The latest batch of leaked documents included a frank assessment from the American envoy to Stockholm about Sweden’s historic policy of nonalignment — a policy which the U.S. ambassador, Michael Woods, seemed to suggest was for public consumption only.

Sweden’s military and intelligence cooperation with the United States “give the lie to the official policy” of non-participation in military alliances, Woods said. He added in a separate cable that Sweden’s Defense Minister Sten Tolgfors fondly remembers his time as a high school student in America and “loves the U.S.”

Woods cautioned American officials not to trumpet Sweden-U.S. cooperation in the fight against terrorism too openly.

“The extent of this cooperation in not widely known within the Swedish government,” he said. “Public mention of the cooperation would open up the government to domestic criticism.”

Woods’ comments were front page news in Sweden Thursday, while WikiLeaks dominated the British news agenda as well.

A front page story in The Guardian alleged that one of the leaked cables showed British politicians trying to keep parliament in the dark over the storage of American cluster bombs on U.K. territory — despite an international ban on the weapons signed up to by British authorities. Britain’s Foreign Office denied the charge.

___

Gillian Smith contributed to this report.

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NEWSLETTER CLOSED

 

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