Suicide bomber pardoned

A 14-year-old would-be suicide bomber from Pakistan, caught while on a mission to blow up an Afghan provincial governor, was pardoned by President Hamid Karzai. The first whiskers of a moustache on his top lip, Rafiqullah stood to one side of the Afghan president, his father, with a full beard, stood to the other, at a ceremony in the capital. Rafiqullah’s father is a poor tradesman from South Waziristan in Pakistan, had sent his son to a religious school, or madrassa, to learn the Qur’an. Later, when he asked where his son was, the teachers there brushed him off, he said.

Then last month, the 14-year-old was caught wearing a suicide vest on a motorbike in the eastern Afghan city of Khost.  “His family thought their child was learning Islamic studies. That is not his fault, nor his father’s, the enemies of Islam wanted him to destroy his life and those of other Muslims. I pardon him and wish him a good life,” the president said. “You are now free and forgiven by the people of Afghanistan,” he said turning to the boy and smiling.

NGOs shut offices

Due to the deteriorating law and order situation in the frontier province of Pakistan after the military operation against Lal Masjid in Islamabad, the non-governmental organizations have closed down their offices in various districts, restricted their activities and shifted their foreign officials to Islamabad.

In the wake of the mosque operation in Islamabad, people staged rallies and attacked the NGO offices and looted their valuables in the Batagram and Mansehra areas.

Editor freed

The editor-in-chief of a government publication, detained this month by the Afghan secret service, has been released on the orders of President Hamid Karzai. Asif Nang was arrested on June 30 in Kabul for having published an article in the governmental review Jirga of Peace. Nang is also a spokesman for Parliamentary Affairs.

Minister Farouq Wardak, had published an extract, critical of Karzai.

Fake currency

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has advised all banks to install necessary equipment and machines for detection of fake currency. Banks were advised to install, necessary equipment and machines for detection of fake currency at least at their main branches for their own use as well as for use by the general public free of cost.

They were also asked to educate their customers about the security features of currency notes and to forewarn counterfeiters on the consequences of committing this crime.

Immigration law

The interim Bangladeshi government has decided to modify the Immigration Act to remove barriers to manpower export. A nine-member inter-ministerial committee, lead by Overseas Employment secretary M Abdul Matin Chowdhury, has been formed to put forward recommendations for bringing “dynamism" in manpower export, an official announcement has said. A team will also visit recruiting and travel agencies to check the trend of illegal manpower export.