Zia son gets life for 2004 attack on PM Hasina

ACNews

Tarique Rahman, the fugitive son of former Bangladesh premier Khaleda Zia, has been sentenced to life and 19 others were given death sentence by a court in Dhaka  over the 2004 grenade attack that killed 24 people and injured 500 others, including PM Sheikh Hasina. The attack on an Awami League rally on August 21, 2004 targeted Hasina, who was the opposition leader at that time. Hasina survived the attack with a partial hearing loss. The verdict comes ahead of the election in December. Rahman, 50, was tried in absentia with the court declaring him a “fugitive”. He now lives in London where he is believed to have sought asylum

Lt Gen Munir is Pakistan’s new ISI chief

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has appointed Lieutenant General Asim Munir as his new chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the country’s most powerful spy agency. Gen Munir was among the six major generals promoted to the rank of lieutenant generals on September 28, three days ahead of the retirement of five lieutenant generals, including the outgoing ISI chief Lt Gen Naveed Mukhtar. Lt Gen Munir’s previous appointment was as DG Military Intelligence (MI) and had also served as commander of the Force Command Northern Areas.

Sri Lanka enacts law to compensate war victims

Sri Lanka’s parliament has passed legislation to pay compensation to victims of the island’s brutal civil war, nearly a decade after the end of the conflict which claimed 100,000 lives.

The legislature voted 59 – 43 to approve a broad reparations bill which seeks to establish an independent office that will compensate survivors as well as victims’ next of kin.

Former strongman president Mahinda Rajapakse’s followers voted against the bill, arguing that it amounted to compensating separatist Tamil rebels who were crushed in a no-holds-barred military campaign in May 2009. The long-delayed legislation had been a key demand of international observers urging reconciliation in the island nation where divisions between minority Tamils and majority Sinhalese persist.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has led a chorus pressing Sirisena and his administration to take urgent steps towards addressing war-era abuses, including punishing soldiers and rebels accused of atrocities.

Sri Lankan forces were accused of killing up to 40,000 Tamil civilians during the final months of the war when the Tigers’ quest for independence came to a bloody end.

International rights groups have called for the prosecution of both the military and the Tigers, who were notorious for suicide bombings and enlisting child soldiers.