Sukna Land Scam

Lt Gen Prakash sackedSukna scam Found guilty; he becomes the senior most Army officer to be dismissed

New Delhi/Guwahati, Dec 3
An Indian Army Court has found that a former Military Secretary, Lieutenant General Avadesh Prakash was guilty on three counts for his involvement in the Sukna land scam that rocked the Army in the late 2008. He has been dismissed from service making him the senior most Army officer to have faced a Court Martial and be dismissed from the service.
Lt Gen Avadesh Prakash has the right to appeal the verdict in the High Court followed by second appeal, if needed, in the Supreme Court. The Army Court has exonerated him on one of the four charges that related to pecuniary gains - financial corruption. Army Court is a body under the Army Act.
Though Gen Prakash retired in January 2010, the Army Act allows for punishment to be handed out till three years after the retirement. Hence, he now stands dismissed from service.
Military secretary (MS) is a crucial position. The MS decides on all postings and transfers of senior officers. The Court Martial held that Lt Gen Avadesh Prakash was guilty of misusing his position under the Army Act section 45; having a conduct unbecoming of his position as an officer under section 63 and an intent to defraud under section 52.
Following the court verdict, Lt Gen Prakash will not get any benefits like pension, medical facilities and provident fund. He will also lose his rank and other decorations.

When Army Chief Gen VK Singh had taken over in March 2010 he had announced a ‘clean-up’ operation, saying “we want to set our own culture right… improve the internal health of the organisation… the Army value system has to be different from the civil society”.

Earlier, another senior officer, Lieutenant General P K Rath, who was the 33 Corps Commander when the incident occurred, was court-martialled in the same case. The case dates back to 2008 and involves the transfer of the land next to the Army's 33 Corps Headquarters in Siliguri, West Bengal, to a real estate developer Dilip Agrawal.

It was Lt Gen Rath's chief of staff, the then Major General Ramesh Halgali who blew the whistle on the land transfer and objected to the NoC being granted. Maj Gen Halgali initially faced the music but was later cleared of all the charges. He was promoted as Lt General and commanded the Jallandhar-based 11 Corps.

Before the Court Martial was ordered, the Army, at the behest of Defence Minister AK Antony had ordered Court of Inquiry (CoI) in January 2010. The then Army Chief, General Deepak Kapoor, suggested ‘administrative action’. However, Antony put his foot down.

The CoI indicted Lt Gen Prakash for using his position to influence officers to transfer the land to the developer. It even suggested that Lt Gen Prakash should be sacked for he "became a facilitator in promoting Dilip Agarwal's business."

Being posted at the Army Headquarters New Delhi, Lt Gen Avadesh Prakash had no jurisdiction over Siliguri which is under the 33 Corps of the Eastern Command. The court of inquiry said that he took undue interest in the building project.

Lt Gen Rath had confessed to having taken the decision at Lt Gen Avadesh Prakash's behest.

Panel urges aid for NRIs released from Gulf jails

4 December 2011

HYDERABAD — The Migrant Rights Council (MRC), an organisation that takes up the cause of Non-Resident Indians, has urged the government to provide assistance to poor Indian migrants who were in jail in Gulf countries including Dubai.

Stating that poor Indian in jail required government assistance in the form of legal aid to come out, Banda Surender Reddy, advisor to MRC, told mediapersons in Hyderabad that there were nearly 5000 prisoners in jail all over the Middle East including 1200 in the United Arab Emirates. “The benefits of the recently concluded prisoner transfer (PT) agreement between India and UAE are yet to be availed,” he said and cited instances of recent deaths of prisoners in foreign jails and requested the government to take urgent steps to ensure assistance is provided to the prisoners in need.

“Indian embassies abroad should have a dedicated staff to address issues of Indian prisoners. Indian migrant workers are bread winners for their families and their imprisonment leads to their families suffering here,” said Reddy, pointing out that most Indian prisoners in UAE were not educated, and do not understand the Sharia law which has provisions for pardon for a murderer if ‘blood money’ was paid to the family of the deceased. The MRC members said that they celebrated UAE’s National Day on Friday as Indo-Arab friendship day. They said that with the recently concluded prisoner swap agreement between the two countries, prisoners convicted in UAE will be able to come back home and serve the rest of their jail terms here, which would greatly reduce the anxieties of the families.

India ‘suspends’ retail reform: government ally

3 December 2011

NEW DELHI — India’s government has ‘suspended’ plans to open the nation’s huge retail sector to global competition that have paralysed parliament, a key ally of the ruling coalition said on Saturday.

The move to allow foreign investment by Wal-Mart and other supermarket giants in India’s estimated $470 billion retail industry was the first big reform to be announced since the government began its second term in 2009.

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee ‘has informed me that the government is suspending the FDI (foreign direct investment retail) issue until a consensus is evolved,’ Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal state, said in televised remarks.

She said people could ‘rest assured’ that the decision to delay foreign investment was not ‘temporary’.

Mukherjee confirmed that he had spoken to Banerjee but said he could not comment on her statement.

‘Officially I cannot announce anything because parliament is in session. A government announcement will be made in parliament,’ he told reporters.

But a Congress party spokesman said that the party welcomed ‘all meaningful efforts’ to break the stalemate that has hamstrung parliament, threatening to derail the government’s legislative plans for the session.

‘In such a situation (as changes to the retail policy), a broad consensus is required,’ Congress general secretary Janardan Dwivedi told India’s CNN-IBN network late Saturday.

Indian television quoted government sources as saying Premier Manmohan Singh’s government was not abandoning the retail policy changes announced late last month but would seek broad agreement before proceeding.

‘Holding back does not mean rolling back,’ India’s Business Standard newspaper quoted an unnamed cabinet minister on its web site as saying.

Anger over the reforms has united shopkeepers, trade unions, influential state leaders and lawmakers from opposition parties and from within Singh’s own coalition.

Banerjee’s regional Trinamool Party is the biggest partner of the Congress coalition and important to its survival in parliament.

The Trinamool Party had objected to the government allowing international supermarkets into India, saying the move would swamp small family-owned stores which dominate the retail landscape and throw millions out of work.

Any retreat on retail reform would be a major blow to Singh’s administration, which has struggled for months against charges of policy paralysis amid worsening economic data, high inflation and corruption scandals.

‘A rollback would be a very bad thing,’ Saloni Nangia, senior vice-president of retail at Technopak, a top Indian consultancy, told AFP before Banerjee’s statement.

‘It would send a bad signal to the international community about the potential for investment.’

Foreign multinationals have lobbied for years to sell directly to Indians.

The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — a staunch free enterprise advocate when in power — has been coordinating protests against with shopkeepers who staged a one-day nationwide strike last Thursday.

‘Wal-Mart may be fine (for the West) but Wal-Mart does not serve us,’ veteran BJP leader L.K. Advani told the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.

The BJP said it wanted a formal abandonment by the government of the cabinet decision to open up to retail to global supermarkets before it would let parliament function.

The government must not ‘fool the people that foreign direct investment in the retail sector is a panacea to solve all problems of poverty and unemployment,’ Advani said.

CSIS head urged government to fight ban on information obtained through torture

Canada’s spy agency was so reliant on information obtained through torture that it suggested the whole security certificate regime, used to control suspected terrorists in the country, would fall apart if they couldn’t use it.

MONTREAL — Canada's spy agency was so reliant on information obtained through torture that it suggested the whole security certificate regime, used to control suspected terrorists in the country, would fall apart if they couldn't use it.

That's the essence of a letter written in 2008 by the former director of CSIS, Jim Judd, obtained by the Montreal Gazette.

It suggests a disturbing acceptance by the national security agency of torture as a legitimate strategy to counter terrorism.

The letter, dated Jan. 15, 2008, was sent from Judd to the minister of public security just as the government was finalizing Bill C-3, legislation to replace the security certificates law which was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in February 2007.

The government had been given a year to come up with new legislation that would respect the charter rights of those targeted by the certificates.

In the letter, Judd urges the minister to fight an amendment to C-3 proposed by Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh that would prohibit CSIS and the courts from using any information obtained from torture or "derivative information" — information initially obtained from torture but subsequently corroborated through legal means.

"This amendment, if interpreted to mean that 'derivative information' is inadmissible, could render unsustainable the current security certificate proceedings," Judd writes. "Even if interpreted more narrowly to exclude only information obtained from sources and foreign agencies who, on the low threshold of "reasonable grounds" may have obtained information by way of torture, the amendment would still significantly hinder the Service's collection and analysis functions."

Despite Judd's opposition, the amended Bill C-3 was adopted in February, 2008. But the letter calls into question CSIS's previous assurances that it did not countenance torture abroad. And observers wonder whether anything has changed in CSIS' approach since C-3 was adopted.

Lawyer Johanne Doyon, who successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to strike down the original security certificate law on behalf of Adil Charkaoui, said after C-3 was passed the government immediately issued five new security certificates — including one for Charkaoui. CSIS had not had time to re-analyze the evidence it was presenting, Doyon said.

"The government was well aware before signing the certificates that they were based on information derived from torture," Doyon said. "It's very disturbing — they just closed their eyes and signed."

Charkaoui, a Moroccan citizen who CSIS alleged was an al-Qaida sleeper agent, was facing removal from Canada until the Federal Court struck down a security certificate against him in 2009.

Doyon is now arguing for a stay of proceedings in the case of Mohamed Mahjoub, held on a second certificate since 2000, and for his release from house arrest next week. Mahjoud was detained in June, 2000, accused of being a high-ranking member of an Egyptian terrorist group.

In his case, a federal court judge ruled in June, 2010 that ministers and special advocates for Mahjoub had to sift through the evidence in the Security Intelligence Report and exclude any that might have been obtained through torture. Justice Edmond Blanchard also said the approach taken by CSIS to filter information so as not to use any derived from torture was not effective.

"It's shocking and it's worrisome for society in general," Doyon said. "It's illegitimate, illegal and unconstitutional to (use information derived from torture.) Who in the name of Canada can be above the law this way?

"And it's not just in one case, but in so many, and with Canadian citizens too — Maher Arar for example (who was sent to Syria and tortured with CSIS complicity) Just where will it lead?"

In an email message Friday, a CSIS spokesperson did not address the 2008 letter from the director. But Tahera Mufti said: "We oppose in the strongest possible terms the mistreatment of any individual by any foreign entity for any purpose. We do not condone the use of torture or other unlawful methods in responding to terrorism and other threats to national security." Mufti also said CSIS uses "appropriate caveats or instructions when sharing information" and that its activities are subject to review by the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which has access to all CSIS "foreign arrangement files. "

In the 2008 letter, the CSIS director says part of the difficulty facing the agency lay in not being able to adequately assess which information came from where; foreign agencies do not often divulge the source of their information.

For Judd, the worst-case scenario would be that the federal court, in reviewing a security certificate, asks CSIS to certify that intelligence was gathered without resort to torture, or renders inadmissible "any and all information provided by agencies in countries whose human rights records are in question — of which there are many."

Amnesty International's 2007 State of Human Rights Report, referenced but redacted in Judd's letter, lists 102 countries which that year had cases of torture and ill-treatment by security forces, police and other state authorities, including the United States.

Judd does not express any concern about the reliability of such information, however. Rather, he suggests an alternative amendment to the bill, which would read "the judge may receive into evidence anything — other than a statement obtained under torture — that in the judge's opinion is reliable and appropriate."

Asked to comment Friday on the substance of the letter, Reem Bahdi, a law professor at the University of Windsor, said the more she learns about the practices of national security agencies, the more worried she becomes about the state of national security in Canada.

"The agencies tell us they don't use torture or support torture on the one hand, and on the other hand they appear to be promoting torture — promoting it as a form of information gathering!" Bahdi said. "I worry not only because information derived from torture is not reliable, but also because of the ramifications around the world that this kind of support for torture can have. What's taking place in the Middle East is very interesting — these are repressive societies built on torture and our agencies are helping to legitimize those regimes through their practices, their relationships with the regimes and their justifications."

Bahdi said the prohibition on torture is part of international law, and was part of Canadian law long before the C-3 amendment. But CSIS needs to be held accountable, she said.

"There has to be a cultural shift in CSIS so they take seriously the prohibition on torture and understand it's not there to tie their hands behind their backs so they can't do their work, but to ensure that their work has some integrity . . .

"If torture produced national security, the regimes in the Middle East would be the safest places in the world."

Audrey Macklin, a professor of law and at the School for Public Policy and Governance of the University of Toronto, said it's not surprising CSIS would warn of the end of the security certificates regime, because so many of them depend on information obtained through torture.

"But it's worth asking, why do we have the security certificates? Before 9/11 we didn't have provisions in criminal law addressing anti-terrorism — now we do. If they are good enough for citizens, why not for non-citizens?"

Source: Montreal Gazette

Simons: Leslie Green, a leading authority in international law, dead at 91

EDMONTON - Last Saturday evening, Leslie Green, 91, one of the world’s leading authorities on international law, was with his wife Lilian at the Winspear Centre, bound to hear the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra play Brahms.

The retired University of Alberta political scientist collapsed in the centre’s elevator on the way up to his seats.

“If he’d had to script it, that’s the way he might have wanted to go,” his daughter Anne, a Calgary arts administrator, says of her father’s death. “He lived his life to the very end.”

And what a life it was. In the course of 91 remarkable years, Green was an British intelligence operative, a war crimes prosecutor, a scholar, an author, an adviser to Canadian, Israeli, and U.S. governments, a patron of the arts, an irrepressible raconteur.

His writing and teaching on the law of warfare and humanitarian law shaped two generations of lawyers, diplomats, and military officers around the world, and helped to redefine the way we prosecute international war crimes.

“He was really a giant in the field,” says Michael Schmitt, chairman of the international law department at the United States Naval War College, and one of Green’s former students. “He wrote the classic textbook on the law of armed conflict. He was the first to really focus on the subject. He was a huge and important influence on the international community.”

Andy Knight, chairman of the U of A department of political science, said Green had an enormous impact, especially in the areas of human rights and the laws of war. “Students loved him and really gravitated toward his classes, even though he could be really tough on them,” Knight said. “He didn’t suffer fools gladly, but he would go to bat for anyone who had their human rights violated.”

Green was born in London in 1920 into a Romanian-Jewish family.

He grew up in London’s tough East End, graduating from the University of London with a law degree in 1941. With the Second World War raging, he joined the British Army, where he was asked to enrol at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies to study Japanese. In 1943, he was then posted to India as a commissioned lieutenant with the Intelligence Corps.

As the war ended, Green became a military lawyer — serving both as a defender and a prosecutor of Indian and Burmese soldiers who had deserted to fight on the side of the Japanese.

In India, Green also met Lilian Meyer. She was a member of the Womens’ Royal Indian Naval Service, and of Calcutta’s deep-rooted Sephardic Jewish community. On their first date, they went horseback riding. Green was thrown, ending up in hospital with a broken pelvis. Lilian was a regular visitor. Then, she went riding, was thrown by the same horse, and broke her knee. Green visited her. In the end, the pelvis-shattering first date sparked a 66-year marriage.

In 1946, Green returned to London as a lecturer in international law and began his prolific writing career. Between 1946 and 1960, he published 60 academic articles, as well as his first authoritative textbook, International Law Through the Cases. In 1960, Green, his wife, and Anne, their only child, left London for the University of Singapore, where Green served as dean of the law faculty. But in 1965, the family moved to Edmonton, where Green was recruited to join the U of A’s department of political science.

“It was snowing in the middle of September when we got off the train from Vancouver,” Anne recalls.

But the family quickly adjusted to life in Canada.

In addition to his teaching and research at the U of A, Green drafted the Canadian Forces Manual on the Law of Armed Conflict and advised the government on everything from treaty negotiations to the Canada embassy’s sheltering of Americans during the Iran hostage crisis. He also served on the board of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and Beth Shalom synagogue, and on the board of Theatre 3, the company Anne co-founded in 1970.

Along the way, among many other honours, he won the Order of Canada, was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and earned the U of A’s highest awards for both research and teaching.

William Fenrick recently retired as a professor of international law at Dalhousie University. Before that, he spent 20 years as a military lawyer, and another 10 as senior legal adviser to the International Criminal Tribunal prosecuting war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia. Green, he says, was his mentor.

Rather than trying to create acolytes to sit at his feet, says Fenrick, Green encouraged students to think for themselves.

“. “He was what I’d call an independent scholar. He was always true to his own opinions. He acted as mentor to a number of people, but he never wanted to create a school of Leslie C. Green.”

Green published nine books and more than 300 papers on everything from international terrorism to the legal status of West Berlin to the legal status of native treaties. He finished and published his last book at the age of 86. And his writing was unusually clear and lively for an academic, short on theory and jargon, long on compelling historical examples.

Anne Green says what linked her father’s academic interests was his unyielding passion for human rights.

“He was always fighting for the underdog. He believed in human rights in general, and the rights of the individual. He did everything he could for justice wherever possible.”

Officially, Green retired from the U of A in 1991, at the age of 71. But he scarcely slowed down. He was a visiting professor at the University of Denver, then held the prestigious Stockton chair in international law at the U.S. Naval War College.

Michael Schmitt says the contrast between the diminutive scholar and the college’s brawny naval officers was both striking and funny.

“He was big in his field, but he was a tiny little guy, kind of like a leprechaun, surrounded by these giant U.S. military officers. But he would keep audiences mesmerized when he spoke. The officers loved him because his work wasn’t theoretical or ideological, but full of practicality. He was very focused on what happens on the battlefield once you get there.”

Green’s public profile increased after the 9/11 attacks, when media from across Canada called him for his insights on everything from international terrorism to the legality of the war in Iraq to the torture and humiliation of prisoners at Abu-Ghraib.

He supported the war in Iraq, arguing that it was “a duty of states to act in the name of humanity and interfere on behalf of citizens being put upon by a tyrant.” But he deplored what he saw as instances of mistreatment of Iraqi and Afghan prisoners by both American and Canadian Forces.

“The trouble seems to be that we have become so close to Big Brother, we have forgotten what our obligations are toward prisoners of war,” he said.

His daughter says he was always “extremely opinionated, but it was impossible to place him in any kind of left-wing/right-wing box. He was way too broad a thinker to pigeonhole that way. He was a lawyer and he was really able to see all sides.”

Jailed Afghan rape victim wins pardon after agreeing to marry attacker

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pardoned a jailed rape victim, but only after she agreed to marry the man she says raped her.

The 19-year-old woman, whose name is Gulnaz, was one of the subjects of a documentary recently produced by the European Union, highlighting the phenomenon of rape victims being imprisoned for the "moral crime" of having sex outside marriage, even against their will.

Karzai's office said in a statement Thursday evening that the president had accepted a recommendation from a special judicial committee that the woman be pardoned and freed - "taking into consideration the consent of both sides for a conditional wedlock."

Gulnaz became pregnant as a result of the rape and gave birth in prison.

Hundreds of Afghan women are serving jail sentences in similar circumstances. But the documentary coverage of Gulnaz's case sparked a petition drive seeking her freedom, and as a result, judicial authorities reexamined her case.

The European Union said in a statement that it welcomed her release.

Reflecting the sensitivity of the issue, however, the EU had decided earlier not to release the documentary, citing concerns over danger to the women, even though those who were profiled had given the filmmakers permission to use their names.

The film was shown to news organizations and human rights groups, however.

The pardon came ahead of an international summit on Afghanistan to be held in Bonn, Germany, beginning this weekend. Women's activists are using the gathering as a forum for speaking out about fears of renewed repression in the country after the Western combat mission ends in the next two years.

During Taliban times, women were forbidden to leave their homes unescorted. Virtually none attended school or held jobs during the Islamic movement's five-year rule, which ended with the U.S.-led invasion of 2001.

Women's groups, however, say the gains of the last decade are threatened by the government's attempts to negotiate a peace settlement with the Taliban and bring the group into the political process.

Senior Addl AG Bhinder resigns

Chandigarh, December 2
Punjab’s Senior Additional Advocate-General Sukhdeep Singh Bhinder has resigned. Sources said Bhinder had submitted his resignation to the Advocate-General to be forwarded to the Home Department.

Bhinder, who hails from Bathinda, was appointed Additional Advocate-General by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal immediately after the formation of the SAD-BJP government in 2007. He had earlier resigned in 2009 to campaign for Harsimrat Kaur Badal for the Lok Sabha elections and was re-appointed as Senior Additional Advocate-General.

Bhinder, who remained in the Ludhiana jail with Badal in the early 1980s, is considered close to Manpreet Singh Badal, Sanjha Morcha chief.

Confirming the resignation, Bhinder said he had quit due to personal reasons.