10  theSun | WEDNESDAY AUGUST 19 2009

news without borders

briefs Former South Korean leader Kim dies

SEOUL: Former President Kim Dae-jung, a tion. Internationally, Kim is best known for summit meeting of the leaders of the two
towering figure in South Korea’s struggle for his historic handshake and embrace of North countries on the divided peninsula.
Passenger arrested for bomb hoax democracy who won the 2000 Nobel Peace Korean leader Kim Jong-il in June 2000, The meeting was the culmination
NEW DELHI: A businessman running behind schedule Prize for seeking rapprochement with the at the first of the “Sunshine Policy” that won
triggered a bomb scare on an airplane in a desperate at- communist North, died yester- Kim the Nobel prize – his idea of
tempt to catch his flight, Indian police said yesterday. Vijay day at the age of 85. prodding the North forward with
Khandelwal, 35, was stuck in a traffic jam on the way to New An official at a Seoul the promise of incentives and
Delhi airport last week when he realised he would miss the hospital treating Kim for reducing the strain of eventual
IndiGo plane to Kolkata unless it was held up, said senior pneumonia confirmed unification through economic in-
police officer Satyendra Garg. the death. Local media tegration.
Khandelwal was arrested after he confessed to making reports said he died of But at home, it was Kim’s
a hoax call on his mobile phone. “Just to delay the flight’s heart failure. life-long struggle against South
departure, he telephoned the call centre of the airline and In his final year, Kim Korea’s early repressive authori-
announced there was a bomb in the aircraft,” Garg said. saw his efforts unravel tarian leaders that defined him
Police arrested Khandelwal by tracing his mobile number as relations with the and made his name a household
and taking a statement from his taxi driver, who had over- North headed back into word and inspiration for genera-
heard him making the hoax call and refused to drop him at the freezer under the tions.
the airport. – AFP South’s current con- Kim was a devout Catholic
servative President Lee who was an inspiring speaker
Myung-bak. in both Korean and English. He
Held for hiring hitmen to kill mother The former political shuffled when he walked due
SEOUL: South Korean police have arrested a man ac- prisoner, popularly referred to injuries suffered to his legs in
cused of hiring two hitmen to murder his adoptive to by his initials “DJ”, was an assassination attempt in the
mother, reports said yesterday. Police allege the son, elected South Korea’s 1970s when a truck rammed
identified only as Lee, found the killers online. He president in December his car off a road.
allegedly paid them 130 million won (RM360,500) to 1997, a victory that marked The exact date of Kim’s
suffocate the woman who had raised him for over 30 the first time in South Korea birth is uncertain, but several
years after finding him abandoned as a baby. that power had shifted from biographies have it listed as
Kim Jong-Il (left) embracing Kim before his
Investigators quoted by the Korea Times and Joon- a ruling party president to a January 6, 1924. – Reuters
departure at Pyongyang’s SooAn airport for
gAng Daily said Lee, a gambling addict, decided to kill president from the opposi- Seoul on June 15, 2000. AFPPIX
his mother after she refused to give him any more of
her property. Lee was arrested after friends and rela-
tives of the deceased, along with the insurance firm,
raised suspicions. – AFP

Quake strikes off Maluku province

JAKARTA: A 5.9-magnitude undersea earthquake struck
in Indonesia’s eastern North Maluku province yesterday,
meteorologists said, but there were no immediate reports
of casualties or damage.
The quake occurred at 8.31am (same time in Malaysia)
Suicide car bomb, rockets
strike Kabul ahead of vote
with an epicentre 127km northwest of Ternate city, the
Indonesian Meteorological and Geophysics Agency said.
It struck at a depth of 10km and no tsunami warning was
issued. Indonesia sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where
the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and
seismic activity. – AFP

RM1.7m stolen in bank car raid
ADEN (Yemen): A car transporting 100 million rials
(RM1.7 million) to Yemen’s central bank in Aden was
stolen at gunpoint, a police source said on Monday.
The vehicle, belonging to the Arab Bank’s branch in
the country’s southern city, was hit in the rear by an-
other car, and unknown gunmen stole both the bank’s
car and cash, the source said. No further details were
immediately available. – Reuters
Mousavi: Govt agents raped detainees
TEHERAN: Opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi accused
“establishment agents” of raping and abusing detainees
imprisoned after Iran’s June presidential vote and urged the
powerful clerics to do their duty and speak out.
“They (authorities) asked those who were abused and raped
in prisons, to present four witnesses (to prove their claim).
Those who committed the crimes were the establishment’s
agents,” he said in a letter to reformist leader Mehdi Karoubi.
“They were threatening detainees to keep silent.”
Mousavi demanded that the republic’s top clerics step in
and pass judgment on a growing political scandal.
“It is the main duty of revolutionary clergy to reflect the
realities, but some have closed their eyes.” – Reuters
Indicted for stealing credit card info
WASHINGTON: A Miami resident was charged with
stealing 130 million credit and debit card numbers in
what the Justice Department described on Monday as
the largest data breach ever in the United States.
Albert Gonzales, 28, and two unnamed computer
hackers were indicted for using a sophisticated hacking
technique called an “SQL injection attack” for stealing
card information, through exploiting computer net-
works by finding a way around their firewall. – dpa
KABUL: A suicide car bomber killed
at least seven people in an attack on a
Western military convoy in the Afghan
capital yesterday and a Taliban rocket
hit the presidential palace grounds
two days before tense elections.
Security officials said at least 52
were wounded by the bomber, who
theSun rammed his explosive-laden vehicle
says: into the convoy on the notorious Jala-
labad road, scene of frequent Taliban
Support attacks and home to many Western
effort to aid and military compounds.
tell full A spokesman for the International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in
PKFZ Afghanistan said foreign troops were
story among the dead and wounded, with-
pg 13 out elaborating.
Aleem Siddique, a spokesman for
the United Nations mission in Kabul,
said two Afghan UN staff members
were among the dead. He said a UN
vehicle had been caught up in the
strike but had not been the bomber’s
target.
With incumbent Hamid Karzai
fighting to win a fresh mandate without
a second round run-off, tomorrow’s
election is also a test of US President
Barack Obama’s strategy of escalating
the eight-year-old conflict in an effort
to reverse recent Taliban gains.
In a speech on Monday aimed at
bolstering public support, Obama
called the Afghan conflict “a war
worth fighting”.
Taliban militants have vowed to
step up that fight and disrupt the poll
with violence that could damage the
election’s legitimacy by limiting voter
turnout.
Thick black smoke poured from
the scene of yesterday’s suicide bomb-
ing and police held back onlookers as
the wounded were ferried away in
ambulances and pickup trucks.
“I saw wounded people and dead
people everywhere,” said a shop-
keeper named Sawad. “I helped some
people to ambulances, their clothes
were covered in blood stains.”
Several small rockets were fired at
the capital overnight. A police source
said one caused some damage inside
the sprawling, fortified presidential
palace compound and a second hit
the capital’s police headquarters.
Neither caused any casualties.
The Taliban claimed responsibil-
ity for the rocket attacks on Kabul, the
third this month.
In Uruzgan province in the south,
a suicide bomber on foot killed three
Afghan soldiers and two civilians
at a police checkpoint. A provincial
council candidate was shot dead in
northern Jowzjan province.
With civilian and military casualties
reaching record levels in the past few
months, two more US service members
were also killed by a roadside bomb in
the east, the US military said.
Election campaigning officially
ended at midnight after a final day
of hectic rallies in support of Karzai
and his main rival, former foreign
minister Abdullah Abdullah.
In a bullish assessment yesterday,
Kai Eide, the United Nations special
representative for Afghanistan, said he
expected the vote would be a success.
“The campaign has exceeded
my expectations and I believe they
represent a milestone in political
maturity in Afghanistan,” Eide told a
news conference.
“I’m not trying to hide that there
have been irregularities, but my over-
all assessment is that this has been a
success for the Afghan people.”
Polls show Karzai likely to win
tomorrow’s vote, but not with the
outright majority required to avoid
a second round in six weeks. The
president is relying on the last-minute
support of former guerilla chieftains
in a bid to tip the balance.
Abdullah, an urbane eye doctor,
has run an energetic campaign, seek-
ing to garner support from beyond
his base in the mainly ethnic Tajik
north.
Recent polls give Karzai about 45%
of the vote to 25% for Abdullah.
Karzai’s late reliance on ex-militia
leaders such as Uzbek general Abdul
Rashid Dostum has raised alarm
among his international backers
worried that warlords could return to
power in the country they dominated
for decades. – Reuters

Senior aide to Pakistani Taliban chief detained by govt forces

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani forces have
captured a senior aide to Baituallah
Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban chief
who was believed to have been killed
recently in a missile strike by a US
drone, military officials said yesterday.
Maulvi Omar was captured by a
pro-government militia in the Mohmand
region on the Afghan border on Monday
and had been handed over to govern-
ment forces, one official said.
The arrest came as US special envoy
to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard
Holbrooke, was visiting Pakistan and co-
incided with reports of infighting within
the Pakistani Taliban since the report of
Mehsud’s death on Aug 5.
“Yes, we have arrested Maulvi Omar
and he will shortly be produced before
the media,” said a senior military official,
who declined to be identified.
He gave no more details. Another
military official confirmed the capture.
Omar was the spokesman for the
Mehsud-led Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan
(TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan,
a loose alliance of 13 militant factions,
although several months ago he was
removed as the chief spokesman for
the alliance.
Mehsud was an Al Qaeda cohort
blamed for a wave of bombings across
Pakistan, including the 2007 assassina-
tion of former prime minister Benazir
Bhutto.
Major Fazal-ur-Rehman, spokesman
for the paramilitary Frontier Corps,
confirmed arrest of “an important com-
mander” of the Taliban but declined to
give his name.
Pakistani and US officials are almost
certain that Mehsud was killed along
with his wife and some guards in the
missile strike on his father-in-law’s
home in the South Waziristan region on
the Afghan border. However, his aides
insist he is alive.
Holbrooke told reporters travelling
with him to Pakistan on the weekend
Mehsud was “gone” and it looked as
if there was a struggle for succession
among his commanders.
The TTP has appointed a new
spokesman, Azam Tariq, since the death
of Mehsud. This week, Islamabad police
arrested another senior Taliban mem-
ber, identified as Saifullah, who police
said was planning to carry out attacks
in the capital, said police spokesman
Naeem Ahmed. – Reuters