Pak Army’s extra-judicial killings, disappearance of Col. Imam and Khalid Khwaja.

By: Earthman, International Professor

Everything has its limits and when excuse crossed the barrier it means that matter is personal. When Pakistan has parliament, courts and police than why Pakistan army is involved beyond its constitutional limits to take law into its hands.

There is no limit of barbarism, cruelty and use of force against civilians. Pakistan army has tear off Geneva Convention and all international laws to deal with civilians. Genocide, massacres, torture and imprisonment is story of every day.

These all are war crimes and culprits are required to be tried in International Court of Justice. Military is an employee of state and if individuals are involved in extra judicial killings, tortures and imprisonments particularly killing women, children and sr. Citizens moreover bulldozing homes is against humanity and against any international law and religion.

Times to time peoples were advised to keep records, images, name and ranks of those individuals that are involved in abuses. With the name and ranks of some available senior officials was sent to UN Human Rights and International Court of Justice for records. There is no doubt that one day all of such criminals would be sentenced by International Courts.

Please read following some reports submitted time to time and a huge record is available for any trial. Please click for reports given below after following Reuters report copied from a website. First see report regarding disappearance of Col. Imam and Khalid Khwaja. (Mean picked by ISI)

Two former ISI officers, journalist missing from Kohat

05 Apr, 2010:  ISLAMABAD: Two former officials of the premier intelligence agency, Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), and a free lance journalist have gone missing in suspicious circumstances from Kohat. Family sources of the missing ISI officials Col (retired) Imam and Sq Leader (retired) Khalid Khawaja revealed that these officers were assisting the free lance journalist Asad Qureshi who was making a documentary on Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

They were on way back to their homes after having a meeting with the Taliban leadership in tribal areas when they were allegedly picked up by unknown people. It is yet not clear who kidnapped them. However, it is pertinent to mention that both the former ISI officers were having close relations with Taliban and Al-Qaeda leadership. —Dawn News

Quote:

Pakistan's Army accused of extra-judicial killings

05 Apr 2010

By Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON, April 5 (Reuters) - The Pakistani army is facing fresh accusations of carrying out extra-judicial killings and torture, claims which could threaten U.S. funding for any units singled out for abuse.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said it had briefed U.S. State Department and congressional officials about mounting evidence of more than 200 summary executions in Swat Valley in the past eight months of suspected Taliban sympathizers.

The Lahore-based Human Rights Commission of Pakistan provided a list of 249 suspected extra-judicial killings from July 30, 2009, to March 22, 2010, saying most of the bodies were found in Swat. It said independent journalists and locals widely believed security forces were behind them.

Officials in Washington said they were taking the accusations of abuse seriously. The Obama administration has raised the matter with Islamabad, officials said.

"We have shared our concern about these allegations with senior Pakistani officials and will continue to monitor the situation closely," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has also discussed U.S. concerns with Pakistani military and government officials.

"While our strong bilateral relationship with Pakistan and our close partnership in combating terrorism are very important to us, we take allegations of human rights abuses seriously," said Geoff Morrell, Pentagon press secretary.

White House National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer said "we are seeing positive forward motion from our friends" in Pakistan on the issue, but did not elaborate.

SENSITIVE MOMENT

Accusations of rights abuses by the Pakistani military are not new, but the latest allegations come at a highly sensitive moment for U.S.-Pakistan relations.

Washington, which faces frequent criticism in Pakistan following suspected CIA drone strikes on militants, wants to strengthen ties with Islamabad. It also wants to encourage more operations against Islamic extremists following the Pakistani military's success in Swat and also in South Waziristan.

But Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said the pace of extra-judicial killings in Pakistan was "not slowing down."

The United States is obliged to enforce a law authored by Senator Patrick Leahy banning assistance to foreign military units facing credible accusations of abuses, he said.

"If they obtain or receive credible information that a particular unit is engaged in this kind of behavior, they have to de-fund the unit," Malinowski said.

Human Rights Watch is not yet able to single out any units for the abuses, which also include illegal detention, he said.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Washington has given more than $15 billion in aid to Pakistan, most of it for security-related work.

The Pentagon's Morrell said aid to Pakistan's military had not been cut off. He said there had been productive dialogue with Islamabad "about how we can help them build their capacity to deal with detainees in a rule of law framework."

"This work has been going on for several months now and we are pleased to see progress being made," he said.

The State Department said U.S. aid was being delivered in full accordance with U.S. law, and added that assistance to Pakistani security forces incorporated human rights training.

BODIES DUMPED

Human Rights Watch said the Army was targeting civilians who had voiced support for the Taliban when they controlled Swat or were suspected of providing them food or shelter.

"People are taken away, and sometimes they turn up a few days or weeks later having been tortured. Sometimes they disappear. Sometimes their body is dumped with a bullet in the head," Malinowski said.

He also described cases of illegal detention.

"A son has gone off to fight with the Taliban, and so another son is taken as a hostage," he said. "And the father is told: We will release son No. 2 when son No. 1 turns himself in."

He said such abuses ran against U.S. counter-insurgency strategy and could erode support for Pakistan's government. The Army remains popular in Swat, which endured a brutal Taliban rule that included public beheadings and floggings.

The White House National Security Council's Hammer said the Obama administration had briefed Congress on the allegations.

Leahy's office declined to comment on the specific allegations of abuse but called for enforcement of U.S. law "so U.S. aid does not go to army units that violate human rights."

"And Pakistani authorities need to know how U.S. law is applied," spokesman David Carle said. (Additional reporting by Michael Georgy in Islamabad and Andrew Quinn in Washington; editing by Mohammad Zargham)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N04141045.htm

Pakistan’s Army accused of extra-judicial killings

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displayarticle.asp?xfile=data/international/2010/April/international_April204.xml§ion=international&col=

Legality of Drone Strikes Still in Question

by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - While welcoming an initial effort by the administration of President Barack Obama to offer a legal justification for drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists overseas, human rights groups say critical questions remain unanswered. In Obama's first year in office, more strikes were carried out than in the previous eight years under his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), they reportedly killed "several hundred" al Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban militants since Obama in 2009, forcing many of them to flee their border hideouts for large cities where precision attacks would be much harder to carry out without causing heavy civilian casualties.
But the strikes - as well as cruise-missile attacks carried out by the U.S. military against suspected terrorist targets in Yemen and Somalia - have drawn growing criticism from some human rights groups and legal scholars, notably the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings, Philip Alston, who have argued that several aspects of these operations may violate international law.
Their focus has been less on the use of drones in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Washington's forces are engaged in active hostilities and the Pentagon has implemented relatively transparent procedures to maximize compliance with the laws of war, than on the frontier areas of Pakistan and other "ungoverned" areas where al Qaeda and Taliban militants have gained refuge. The CIA, whose procedures remain secret, is in charge of drone operations.
The weapon itself "is one of the least problematic from a civilian-protection standpoint, because drones can hover over their targets and observe whether civilians are present before delivering a payload, and because they carry relatively small and precisely guided munitions," noted Malinowski.
"The question is a legal one: under what circumstances can you use lethal force at all? Our view has always been that it should be limited to zones of active armed conflict where normal arrest operations are not feasible." A related question involves who may be targeted. While many authorities insist lethal force can be used under the laws of war against those who are actively participating in armed conflict, the U.S. has used defined participation in very broad terms, including membership in - or even financial support of - an armed group.
In his remarks to the American Society for International Law, Koh, who was one of the harshest and most outspoken critics of the Bush administration's legal tactics in its "global war on terror", acknowledged some of these concerns, noting that his speech "is obviously not the occasion for a detailed legal opinion."
"(W)hether a particular individual will be targeted in a particular location will depend upon considerations specific to each case, including those related to the imminence of the threat, the sovereignty of the other states involved, and the willingness and ability of those states to suppress the threat the target poses," he said. Koh added that Washington will ensure the application of the principles of "distinction" and "proportionality" in the laws of war.
While noting criticism that the use of lethal force against some individuals far removed from the battlefield could amount to an "unlawful extra-judicial killing", he insisted that "a state that is engaged in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defence is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force."
"Our procedures and practices for identifying lawful targets are extremely robust, and advanced technologies have helped to make our targeting even more precise," he said. Alston, the U.N. rapporteur, was far from satisfied with these assurances, however, calling Koh's statement "evasive". He "was essentially arguing that 'You've got to trust us. I've looked at this very carefully. I'm very sensitive to these issues. And all is well,'" he told an interviewer on 'Democracy Now' Thursday.
"The speech did not provide essential information about the drone/targeted killing program, including the number and rate of civilian casualties, and the internal oversight and controls on targeted killing, especially within the CIA," said Manes of the ACLU, which has filed a lawsuit to acquire that information. Tom Parker of Amnesty International was more scathing about Koh's position, suggesting that it was one more concession - along with indefinite detention and special military tribunals for suspected terrorists - to the framework created by Bush's "global war on terror".
"The big issue is where the war is and whether it's a war, and we couldn't disagree more strongly as to the tenor of Koh's comments," he said. "It goes back to the idea of an unbounded global war on terror where terror is hardly defined at all."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/04/03-2

For further reading:

Pakistan Air Force Chief is a war criminal

http://makepakistanbetter.com/why_how_what_forum.asp?GroupID=5&Group_title=Pakistan&ArticleID=8591

Dismiss General Kiyani to save Pakistan

http://makepakistanbetter.com/why_how_what_forum.asp?GroupID=5&Group_title=Pakistan&ArticleID=8384

Amnesty International Calls on Pakistani Army to Stop Harassment of Mehsud Tribe

http://makepakistanbetter.com/why_how_what_forum.asp?GroupID=5&Group_title=Pakistan&ArticleID=7938

War crimes of Pak army – Are Obama and Hillary ready to take responsibility of massacre?

http://makepakistanbetter.com/why_how_what_forum.asp?GroupID=5&Group_title=Pakistan&ArticleID=6521

Chronological evidence of massacre and genocide

http://makepakistanbetter.com/why_how_what_forum.asp?GroupID=5&Group_title=Pakistan&ArticleID=6363

Swat Massacre by Pak Army is based on ethnic and religious hatred.
A case for International Courts of Justice and UNO Human Rights

http://makepakistanbetter.com/why_how_what_forum.asp?GroupID=5&Group_title=Pakistan&ArticleID=6351

Laser Bombs killed 300 villagers – UNO and International court of justice must track genocide and massacre of civilians.

http://makepakistanbetter.com/why_how_what_forum.asp?GroupID=5&Group_title=Pakistan&ArticleID=6280

We lifted our burqas and held up the Qur'an to beg for mercy, helicopter shot killing half the truck's passengers.

http://makepakistanbetter.com/why_how_what_forum.asp?GroupID=9&ArticleID=6200