Missing links unveiled?
stealing government secrets and giving them to the enemy. Rather, it was a different kind of spying.
Before going there, we should note that the case of Tal al-Mallohi, who is a 19-year-old student blogger, was highlighted by international rights groups last month.
Syrian sources told the BBC that she is due to appear in court in the next few days on charges of spying for a foreign power — but Mallohi has been denied access to a lawyer. Her parents were allowed to see her for the first time in nine months last Thursday, rights groups say.
“She was detained on the accusation of spying for a foreign country,” a Syrian official told AP, confirming similar reports in the local press. “Her spying led to an attack against a Syrian army officer by the agents of this foreign country,” he added, declining to elaborate further.
The BBC says that it is not clear whether Mallohi’s arrest is connected to her blog, which contains poetry and social commentary that focuses mostly on the suffering of Palestinians.
Last month, the New York-based Human Rights Watch called for the young woman’s immediate release. “Detaining a high school student for nine months without charge is typical of the cruel, arbitrary behavior of Syria’s security services,” Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
Amnesty International has expressed fears that Mallohi is at risk of torture, saying it has documented thirty-eight different types of torture and ill-treatment used against detainees in Syria.
We do not know what are the specific charges against Mallohi, and what evidence the Syrian authorities have against her. The words of the Syrian official rang a bell, though: “She was detained on the accusation of spying for a foreign country…. Her spying led to an attack against a Syrian army officer by the agents of this foreign country.”
3. Tell us something we don’t already know
Former Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf admitted Kashmir militants trained in Pakistan
Musharaf told the German magazine Der Spiegel that his forces trained militant groups to fight in Indian-administered Kashmir. He said that the government turned a blind eye because it wanted to put pressure on India to enter talks.
India has always alleged that Pakistan trained militants in the 1990s. The BBC reports that this is thought to be the first time such a senior figure in Pakistan has admitted it.
Last week Musharraf apologized for “negative” actions he took while in power, as he launched his new political party, the All Pakistan Muslim League, in London.
Musharraf said: “I… sincerely apologize to the whole nation” for the “negative repercussions.” He vowed to galvanize Pakistanis and fight a “jihad against poverty, hunger, illiteracy and backwardness.”
The BBC quotes correspondents to say there was no real likelihood of him returning soon to Pakistan.
Musharraf seized power in 1999 when, as chief of Pakistan’s army, he ousted elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a coup.
There is nothing surprising about what Musharaf said. Pakistani denials notwithstanding, there was plenty of evidence that the ISI, Pakistan’s spy agency, and the military were supplying and training Islamic terrorists to destabilize India and weaken its hold over Kashmir.
What Musharaf needs to do now is to come clean on the extent to which Pakistani-trained terrorists have been undermining the West’s anti-Taliban efforts in Afghanistan — and killing U.S. and coalition soldiers in the process — and the degree to which some of these Pakistan-trained terrorists have gone back to their home states in the West to pursue their jihad in Europe and the United States.
He should address this question, too: since he is running again to become Pakistan’s leader, what does he intend to do, if he gains a position of power, about the embrace of terrorists by the Pakistani secret service and military?
Ben Frankel is editor of the Homeland Security NewsWire
