The Foreign Office spokesperson said that Islamabad was in touch with the authorities in Washington and awaiting further details after reports emerged of a Pakistani national’s alleged involvement in the foiled assassination attempt on former US president Donald Trump.
In a statement, FO spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said: “We have seen the media reports. We are in touch with the US authorities and await further details.”
The spokesperson said that they have also noted the statements by US officials that this is an ongoing investigation.
“Before giving our formal reaction, we also need to be sure of the antecedents of the individual in question,” she added.
A Pakistani man with alleged ties to Iran has been charged in the US in connection to a foiled plot to assassinate a US politician or government officials, the Justice Department said on Tuesday.
Asif Merchant, 46, sought to recruit people in the US to carry out the plot in retaliation for the US killing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ top commander Qassem Soleiman in 2020, according to a criminal complaint.
Merchant, who prosecutors allege spent time in Iran before traveling to the US, was charged with murder for hire in federal court in New York’s Brooklyn borough. A federal judge ordered him detained on July 16, according to court records.
“For years, the Justice Department has been working aggressively to counter Iran’s brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials for the killing of Iranian General Soleimani,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
FBI investigators believe that former president Donald Trump, who approved the drone strike on Soleimani, and other current and former US government officials were the intended targets of the plot, CNN reported, citing a US official.
Court documents do not name the alleged targets of the plot. Merchant told a law enforcement informant that there would be “security all around” one target, according to the criminal complaint.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment further. Trump’s presidential campaign could not immediately be reached for comment.
DHAKA: There was jubilation and also lingering anger on the streets of Dhaka after mass protests forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee the country, but many worried what would happen next.
“We are free now — we have won!” said Syed Tanveer Rahman, 30, an activist in the movement that began as protests against quotas giving government jobs to people seen as Hasina allies, but morphed into mass demonstrations against her rule.
“We began the movement to make the government’s recruitment tests fairer, but it has turned into a commitment to reform our whole system and make it fairer for all,” Rahman said.
Hasina was accused of becoming increasingly authoritarian, with some young protesters describing her as a dictator.
The mass demonstrations were partly fuelled by poverty. The government had sought a bailout from the International Monetary Fund as the economy struggled with costly imports and high inflation.
“I can tell you I am feeling a tremendous joy of liberation — liberation from a harsh dictatorship,” said Lamisa Janan, a high school student who said she dashed out of her home to join the crowds as soon as she heard the government had fallen.
Some normality returned to Dhaka on Tuesday, a day after Hasina fled, though traffic was lighter than usual and only a few schools reopened after the violence.
But even after Hasina had fled, there was still anger amidst the joy. At a busy intersection, protesters climbed a large statue of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and hacked at its head with axes, hammers and chisels.
“She made us bow down to the image of her father. Everywhere you see his statues, photos,” said Zafar Ahmed, a young man who joined in the destruction. “We will destroy all the statues.”
In Dhanmondi, an upmarket neighbourhood considered a stronghold of the Awami League, protesters torched the party chairperson’s office and the house where Hasina lived while she was opposition leader from 2001 to 2006.
They also set fire to the Bangabandhu Museum in Dhanmondi, formerly the residence of Hasina’s father before he was assassinated there in 1975.
Many young people said they were concerned about how the situation would evolve in the coming days and months.
“I am sickened by the scenes of chaos and looting at the public institutions — that is not the way to celebrate,” said Jahanara Amin, a 35-year-old banker.
“It is not the time for triumphal celebration. There is a long road ahead to ensure that the system works better for everyone, including young people,” said Minhazul Islam, a researcher at Unnayan Shamunnay, a policy think tank.
Writer and activist Parvez Alam said there was now a chance for a new Bangladesh to emerge.
“The young people in Bangladesh have been calling for `repairing the state’ for the last 10 years or so, based on core values like equality, human dignity, and social justice,” said Alam.
“The July uprising provides us an opportunity to rebuild our state from the ruins,” he said.
Adnan Aziz Chowdhury, a recent graduate and activist at the Bangladesh Student Union, called for the government to create more job opportunities and training for young people.
“The long-standing practices of nepotism and discrimination in recruitment in public and private sector jobs should be eliminated,” he said.
Others called for more openness and freedom.
“Bangladesh should have the space for people of all religious creeds, lifestyles, opinions —allowing the right to ask questions, make cartoons or satire and so on,” said Farida Ali Khan, a young housewife and mother.
“The only thing that should be excluded is dictatorship.”
JENIN: Palestinian officials said Israeli forces killed 12 people in three separate raids in the northern West Bank on Tuesday, as violence in the occupied territory showed no sign of abating.
Five people were killed in the Jenin area and four in Aqaba town in Tubas district when Israeli forces carried out early-morning raids, the health ministry in Ramallah said.
The Israeli army said three people were killed and two arrested in another raid in the village of Kafr Qud, west of Jenin.
The Palestinian Red Crescent had earlier reported deaths and injuries “due to the occupation’s shelling of two vehicles in the eastern neighbourhood of Jenin”.
Aqaba residents said Israeli troops arrived at dawn and surrounded the house of Amid Ghanam, leading to clashes between troops and young Palestinians.
Ghanam and two others were killed in the clashes, while another teenager was killed near a hospital, Tubas governor Ahmed Assad told AFP.
“The army entered and surrounded the house as snipers took positions on nearby rooftops and shot anyone who moved,” he said.
The teenager was shot when the troops “entered the area of the hospital”, Assad said. Aqaba mayor Abdel Razzaq Abu Arra said the teenager “was killed in cold blood”. “This Zionist crime is a systematic crime that the Israelis carry out on a daily basis,” he added.
Lebanon’s group Hezbollah launched a series of drone and rocket attacks into northern Israel on Tuesday but warned that its much-anticipated retaliation for Israel’s killing of a top commander last week was yet to come.
Hezbollah said it launched a swarm of attack drones at two military sites near Acre in northern Israel, and also attacked an Israeli military vehicle in another location.
The Israeli military said a number of hostile drones were identified crossing from Lebanon and one was intercepted.
Israeli medical officials said seven people were evacuated to hospital, to the south of the coastal city of Nahariya, one in critical condition.
The Israeli military said an initial investigation indicated the injuries were caused by an interceptor that “missed the target and hit the ground, injuring several civilians.” It said the incident was still under review.
A Hezbollah source told Reuters that “the response to the assassination of commander Fuad Shukr has not yet come.”
Earlier on Tuesday, four people were killed in a strike on a home in the Lebanese town of Mayfadoun, nearly 30km north of the border, medics and a security source said. Two additional security sources said those killed were Hezbollah fighters, but the group had not yet posted its usual death notices.
Systematic abuse, torture
Meanwhile, Israeli rights group B’Tselem said in a report that Israel has conducted a systematic policy of prisoner abuse and torture since the start of the Gaza war, subjecting Palestinian detainees to acts ranging from arbitrary violence to sexual abuse.
It said the report, issued on Monday, was based on interviews with 55 Palestinians from Gaza, the West Bank and Israel detained in Israeli prisons since Hamas’ Oct 7 attack on Israel that set off the war, most of them without being tried.
“The testimonies clearly indicate a systematic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel,” the report said.
The B’Tselem report was issued days after the Israeli military detained nine soldiers accused of severe abuse of a prisoner in a military facility in the Negev desert. Israeli press reports said the soldiers were accused of sexually abusing a member of an elite Hamas unit.
The report detailed allegations that Palestinian prisoners were subjected to arbitrary beatings, degrading and humiliating treatment and sleep deprivation, as well as “the repeated use of sexual violence, in varying degrees of severity”.
“The overall picture indicates abuse and torture carried out under orders, in utter defiance of Israel’s obligations both under domestic law and international law,” it said.
Although officers in Liverpool and Durham issued dispersal orders to head off potential unrest, Tuesday night was free of the violent scenes that have played out across the UK since the initial disturbances in Southport a week earlier.
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But officers are monitoring threats of further rioting against immigration law specialists, some of which had either closed or accepted offers of additional police protection.
Police fail to stop armed counter-protesters
A list of solicitors’ firms and advice agencies has been shared in chat groups as possible targets for gatherings, with the message inviting people to “mask up” if they attend.
The Law Society of England and Wales described such gatherings as a “direct assault on our legal profession”, while Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said threats against solicitors were “unacceptable” and those making them would “join the hundreds of others who have already been arrested by police within the last week”.
Approximately 6,000 specialist officers will be at the ready by the end of the week for the so-called “standing army” of police announced by Sir Keir on Monday. These officers have been taken away from their regular duties to deal with ongoing disorder.
In addition to more riot police being put on standby, forces are also stepping up neighbourhood policing patrols, teams of detectives are drawing on CCTV, body-worn footage and making use of retrospective facial recognition to identify perpetrators of violence, and intelligence teams are monitoring well-known influencers and organisers for activity.
More than 400 people have been arrested in connection to the riots, and charges continued to be brought on Tuesday night with defendants expected in court on Wednesday.
Asserting that the provision of security to the Chinese nationals living in the country was a top priority for the government, Interior Minister Syed Mohsin Naqvi said on Tuesday that the government would also provide every possible facility to the Chinese businessmen who were interested in investing their capital in Pakistan.
Talking to a delegation of the Chinese businessmen, who led by the country’s Consul General Zhao Shiren, called on him in Lahore, he said that the standard operating procedures had been devised for the protection of the Chinese citizens living in Pakistan. “The government will take all possible steps to ensure the safety of the Chinese nationals living in the country,” the minister assured the delegation.
He informed that from August 14, the people of China would be able to get visas for Pakistan online, which would greatly facilitate their trips to the country. “I have jotted down your suggestions, and soon you will see progress on them,” Naqvi said.
Speaking on the occasion, China’s consul general said that Pak-China relations were exemplary. “The interior minister is not only my friend but he is also the friend of the People’s Republic of China,” he said, and expressed the hope that there would be a positive outcome of today’s meeting.
Senior officials of the federal and provincial law-enforcement agencies were present at the meeting which continued for three hours.
Other officials, who were in attendance, were Secretary Interior Khurram Ali Agha, Punjab IGP Dr. Usman Anwar, NECTA Chief Rai Tahir, CCPO Lahore Bilal Siddique Kamyana and others.
Emphasising that granting due rights to the people of Kashmir is the only way to maintain peace and stability in the region, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif urged New Delhi to resolve the long-standing dispute via dialogue as Youm-e-Istehsal-e-Kashmir being observed today.
In his televised address to the Azad Jammu & Kashmir Legislative Assembly, the prime minister said the day was not far away when both India and Israel will be bound to give due rights to the people of Palestine and Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) as all ways other than this lead to total destruction.
He said Pakistan was a nuclear power and that was part of its defence. However, he said Pakistan had never thought of aggression with regard to its nuclear power. “Therefore the better option is to adopt the peaceful way and sit together to find out the peaceful solution to the Kashmir dispute.”
The prime minister pointed out that this occasion reminded us of the grave consequences of India’s illegal actions of 5 August 2019 vis-à-vis IIOJK when PM Narendra Modi-led government revoked the semi-autonomous status of the disputed valley.
Ever since, he said today, in IIOJK, efforts were being made to silence the genuine leadership of the Kashmiri people and muzzle the media. “The number of political prisoners remains in the thousands, while 14 political organisations have been outlawed.”
Harassment of innocent people, arbitrary detentions, and the so-called ‘cordon and search operations’ have become a matter of routine. The Indian forces are operating with impunity, according to them under different draconian laws, he added.
PM Shehbaz vowed that until the Kashmiris get the basic rights and freedom, Pakistan will continue to extend the moral support and will continue to knock on the doors of all the international institutions.
Paying tributes to the people of Kashmir, he said: “We salute to their struggle for freedom who had been bearing the atrocities and cruelties of the Indian armed forces for 77 years.”
He also paid tributes to the Hurriyat leaders including Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas, Sardar Ibrahim Khan, Mirwaiz Muhammad Yousuf, Syed Ali Gilani, Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai, Altaf Ahmed Shah, Moulana Abbas Ansari, and all the young workers and leaders who raised their voices against the Indian atrocities.
“We salute Asiya Andrabi, Yaseen Malik, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, Mussarat Alam Butt, and Burhan Wani for their struggle for freedom.”
As regards, the Palestine situation, the prime minister said more than 40,000 Palestinians had been martyred so far including thousands of children. The unarmed Palestinians were still being martyred every day, he said.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, through his army, has broken the records of barbarism in Palestine, he said adding that recently, in Tehran, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was martyred.
In Pakistan, he said a day of mourning was observed and funeral prayers in absentia were offered across the country.
He also condemned the arrest of the Imam of Aqsa Mosque who talked about Haniyeh’s martyrdom.
The meeting would be held at the OIC General Secretariat in Jeddah, according to a statement issued by the secretariat on Monday.
It said the meeting has been convened in response to the atrocities being committed by the Israeli forces against the Palestinian people, particularly in the Gaza Strip.
To date, it said, Israeli actions have resulted in the deaths of 40,000 individuals, mostly women and children, and injuries to over 91,000 Palestinians. Also, civilian properties, including 430,000 homes, have been destroyed along with infrastructure, hospitals, schools, mosques and historical sites. Two million Palestinians have been displaced due to the attacks.
Also, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told a presser in Cairo that Turkiye would formally submit its declaration of intervention in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ on Wednesday.
Russia has condemned the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, leader of Hamas, in Iran last week and called on all parties to refrain from steps that could tip the Middle East into a wider regional war.
Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s security council, was shown by Russia’s Zvezda television station meeting Rear Admiral Ali Akbar Ahmadian, a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander who serves as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.
Shoigu, who was Russia’s defence minister before being moved to the security council in May, will also meet President Masoud Pezeshkian, Zvezda said.
“In Tehran, the secretary of the Russian Security Council is scheduled to meet with the president, the secretary of the Supreme National Security
Council and the head of the General Staff,“ according to Zvezda TV.
Though Putin has yet to comment in public on the recent escalation of tensions in the Middle East, senior Russian officials have said that those behind the killing of Haniyeh were seeking to scuttle any hope of peace in the Middle East and to draw the United States into military action.
Iran has blamed Israel and said it will “punish” it; Israeli officials have not claimed responsibility.
Russia has cultivated closer ties with Iran since the start of its war with Ukraine and has said it is preparing to sign a wide-ranging cooperation agreement with the Islamic State group.
“We received 80 bodies inside 15 bags, with more than four martyrs in each bag, each wrapped in a single shroud”, Civil Defence director Yamen Abu Suleiman said.
Abu Suleiman said Israeli authorities did not provide any information about the bodies, including their names or where they were found or taken from. “We do not know if they are martyrs (killed in Gaza) or prisoners from (Israel’s) jails”, he added.
Journalists on the scene saw men in hazmat suits inspecting the corpses wrapped in blue plastic sheeting, before unloading them from the shipping container they had arrived in.
Tel Aviv did not provide any information about the bodies, including their names or where they were found or taken from
The bodies were then laid in a line for burial in a mass grave dug in the sand, with scores of Palestinians watching from the side.
The bodies were later buried at the Turkish cemetery, near Khan Yunis, the main city in the southern part of Gaza, journalists said.
“You will ask me the reason why I put all the bodies in a mass grave?” said Tabesh Abu Ata from the Turkish cemetery. “Because I have no capabilities to bury each one in an individual grave, (there are no) stones or tiles” for that, he said.
Salwa Karaz, a displaced woman from Gaza City in the north, said that she had gone to the cemetery hoping to find her 32-year-old son Marwan, who went missing in January. He left behind an eight-month-old son.
“When we learned that 80 bodies had been handed over, we came to search in hopes of finding him among them”, the 59-year-old said. “As of now, we have not learned anything,” she lamented.
“We will try to identify him through his clothes. He was wearing brown pants, a navy blue shirt, a black jacket, and beige boots.” She last saw him leaving on his bicycle from their shelter in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.
In a statement released on Monday, Hamas said Israel’s delivery of bodies without identities “exacerbates the suffering of the families of martyrs and the missing, who seek to know the fate of their abducted children or to bury their martyrs in a dignified manner”.
In December, Hamas government sources said Israel returned the bodies of 80 Palestinians killed in Gaza after taking them from morgues and graves to check there were no hostages among them. The bodies were then buried in Gaza, the sources added.
Hasina, 76, had been in power since 2009 but was accused of rigging elections in January and then watched millions of people take to the streets over the past month demanding she step down.
Hundreds of people died as security forces sought to quell the unrest, but the protests grew and Hasina finally fled Bangladesh aboard a helicopter on Monday as the military turned against her.
Army chief General Wakeruz Zaman announced on Monday afternoon on state television that Hasina had resigned and the military would form a caretaker government.
“The country has suffered a lot, the economy has been hit, many people have been killed — it is time to stop the violence,” said Zaman, shortly after jubilant crowds stormed and looted Hasina’s official residence.
Zaman plans to meet the protest organisers at 12pm local time (6am GMT) on Tuesday, the army said in a statement.
Student protest leaders, ahead of an expected meeting with the army chief, said that they wanted Nobel laureate and microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus, 84, to lead the government.
“In Dr Yunus, we trust,” Asif Mahmud, a key leader of the Students Against Discrimination (SAD) group, wrote on Facebook.
A reliable source confirmed to The Daily Star that Yunus has agreed to lead the interim government as its chief adviser.
Traffic was lighter than usual in the usually chaotic streets of Dhaka and schools reopened with thin attendance after closing down in mid-July as protests against quotas in government jobs spiralled.
Garment factories, which supply apparel to some of the world’s top brands and are a mainstay of the economy, will remain closed on Tuesday and plans to reopen will be announced later, the main garment manufacturers association said
At least 109 people were killed during violent unrest in Bangladesh on Monday as the prime minister was ousted, police and doctors said, updating an earlier toll.
It marked the deadliest day since protests began in early July, and brings the total number killed to 409, according to an AFP tally based on police, government officials and doctors at hospitals.
Millions of Bangladeshis flooded the streets of Dhaka after Zaman’s announcement on Monday.
“I feel so happy that our country has been liberated,” said Sazid Ahnaf, 21, comparing the events to the independence war that split the nation from Pakistan more than five decades ago.
“We have been freed from a dictatorship. It’s a Bengal uprising, what we saw in 1971 and [are] now seeing in 2024.”
Protesters stormed parliament and torched TV stations, while some smashed statues of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s independence hero.
Others set a museum dedicated to the former leader on fire, flames licking at portraits in destruction barely thinkable just hours before, when Hasina had the loyalty of the security forces under her autocratic grip.
“The time has come to make them accountable for torture,” said protester Kaza Ahmed. “Sheikh Hasina is responsible for murder.”
Offices of Hasina’s Awami League across the country were torched and looted, eyewitnesses told AFP.
Zaman said a curfew would be lifted on Tuesday morning, with the military set to lead an interim government.
Bangladeshi President Mohammed Shahabuddin on late Monday had ordered the release of prisoners from the protests, as well as former prime minister and key opposition leader Khaleda Zia, 78.
Zia, who is in poor health, was jailed by her arch-rival Hasina for graft in 2018.
The president and army chief also met on late Monday, alongside key opposition leaders, with the president’s press team saying it had been “decided to form an interim government immediately”.
It was not immediately clear if Zaman would lead it.
Hasina’s fate was also uncertain. She fled the country by helicopter, a source close to the ousted leader told AFP.
Media in neighbouring India reported Hasina had landed at a military airbase near New Delhi.
A top-level source said she wanted to “transit” on to London, but calls by the British government for a UN-led investigation into “unprecedented levels of violence” put that into doubt.
There were widespread calls by protesters to ensure Hasina’s close allies remained in the country.
Bangladesh’s military said they had shut down Dhaka’s international airport on Monday evening, without giving a reason.
Bangladesh has a long history of coups.
The military declared an emergency in January 2007 after widespread political unrest and installed a military-backed caretaker government for two years.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed the importance of a “peaceful, orderly and democratic transition”, his spokesman said.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell echoed that call. Former colonial ruler Britain and the United States meanwhile urged “calm”.
Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center, warned that Hasina’s departure “would leave a major vacuum” and that the country was in “uncharted territory”.
“The coming days are critical,” he said.
Meanwhile, families of political prisoners secretly jailed in Bangladesh under the autocratic rule of Hasina waited desperately for news of their relatives, as some of those missing were released.
“We need answers,” said Sanjida Islam Tulee, a coordinator of Mayer Daak, meaning “The Call of the Mothers” — a group campaigning for the release of people detained by Hasina’s security forces.
Rights groups accused Hasina’s security forces of abducting and disappearing some 600 people — including many from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the banned Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest religio-political party.
Tulee told AFP that at least 20 families gathered outside a military intelligence force building in a northern Dhaka neighbourhood, waiting for news of their relatives.
Among the most high profile of those released on Tuesday was opposition activist and lawyer Ahmad Bin Quasem, son of Mir Quasem Ali, the executed leader of Jamaat-e-Islami.
“He was released from secret detention this morning,” family friend and relative Masum Khalili told AFP. “He had a medical check-up, his condition is stable.”
Quasem, a British-educated barrister, was abducted — allegedly by security forces in plainclothes — in August 2016.
Security forces during Hasina’s rule were accused of detaining tens of thousands of opposition activists, killing hundreds in extrajudicial encounters, and disappearing their leaders and supporters.
Human Rights Watch last year said security forces had committed “over 600 enforced disappearances” since Hasina came to power in 2009, and nearly 100 remain unaccounted for.
Hasina’s government denied the allegations of disappearances and extrajudicial killings, saying some of those reported missing drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe.
“We heard Ahmad Bin Quasem has been released,” Tulee said, “but what happened to others? “
