ARAB TIMES, TUESDAY, MAY 9, 2017
INTERNATIONAL
16
World News Roundup
Asia
Indonesia to disband Hizbut
Japan, India to boost
defence cooperation
TOKYO, May 8, (Agencies): Japan and India are discussing ways to strengthen their military cooperation
amid rising tension in the Asian region.
Indian Defense Minister
Arun Jaitley told his Japanese
counterpart, Tomomi Inada,
in Tokyo on Monday that his
county hopes to pursue a strategic partnership with Japan
for regional peace and stability.
His visit comes at a time of
rising tension in the region, including territorial rows in the
South China Sea and nuclear
and missile threats from North
Korea.
Jaitley
Jaitley welcomed a planned
trilateral naval exercise among the US, India and Japan in July as a way of strengthening cooperation in
the Asia-Pacific.
Jaitley, who is also India’s finance minister, visited
Japan to attend an annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank that ended Sunday.
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Wife seeks release of Turk in Malaysia: The wife
of a Turkish businessman detained in Malaysia for alleged terrorism offences made a tearful appeal to the
government Monday to release him, saying he is innocent.
“I am begging the Malaysian government and police not to deport him,” Ainnurul Aisyah Yunos told a
news conference.
Her husband Ihsan Aslan was arrested together with
another Turkish national, Turgay Karaman, last week
under a security law which allows detention without
trial for 28 days.
Malaysia’s deputy prime minister Ahmad Zahid
Hamidi has said anti-terrorism police had been investigating the two men, along with others, for “spreading, influencing and funding” activities by the Islamic
State group.
But rights groups fear Malaysia may be responding
to pressure from Turkey, which has mounted a huge
crackdown on perceived opponents since a failed coup
against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last year.
(AFP)
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Indonesia to disband Hizbut: The top Indonesian
security minister said Monday the country’s president has ordered the dissolution of a hard-line Islamic
group that seeks a global caliphate for Muslim nations and was behind massive blasphemy protests in
Jakarta.
Wiranto, who goes by one name, announced the action against Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia at a brief news
conference and said it was ordered by President Joko
“Jokowi” Widodo.
Wiranto, who is the coordinating minister for politics,
law and security, said the “activities of HTI are strongly
indicated to be running against Pancasila (Indonesia’s
pluralistic state ideology) and the constitution.”
The move comes after Jokowi’s government was
shaken by massive protests in the past six months
by conservative Muslim groups against the minority
Christian governor of Jakarta, who is accused of blaspheming the Quran.
Wiranto said HTI’s activities “have clearly caused
conflict in society” and threaten the integrity of the
state. He said dissolution of the group would be
achieved through the courts.
Hizbut was one of several hard-line groups behind
the Jakarta protests that undermined Indonesia’s reputation abroad for practicing a moderate form of Islam.
It is active in dozens of countries despite being banned
in some of them and began expanding in Asia several
years ago.
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Indonesia to probe jail break: Indonesia has
launched an investigation into accusations of mistreatment by prison guards, after around 350 inmates broke
out of an overcrowded jail on Sumatra island in Riau
Province last week, an official said on Monday.
Three days after the mass escape, 151 prisoners were
still on the run and 197 have been recaptured, Ferdinand
Siagian, the head of Riau Province’s Law Ministry office, which oversees Pekanbaru prison, told Reuters.
“We are carrying out a deep investigation into the
serving officers,” said Siagian, adding that the warden
of the prison had been transferred to a different post.
Before the prison break, prisoners had complained
about mistreatment, accusing some guards of violence, Siagian told Metro TV on Friday.
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‘IS fighter’s son can return’: A 6-year-old Australian boy photographed making an Islamic State movement salute in front of a human body hanging from a
cross somewhere in the Middle East was entitled to
return to Australia with his siblings, Australia’s prime
minister said on Monday.
But such children who returned from the battlefields
of Syria and Iraq would be subjected to “the closest attention” to ensure Australians were safe, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said.
“We will be utterly resolute in keeping Australians
safe, and that applies to anyone who returns from the
conflict zone, whether they are an adult or a child,”
Turnbull told reporters.
Australian media on Sunday published the photograph posted on social media by Sydney-born convicted terrorist Khaled Sharrouf of his youngest child. The
smiling boy holds up his right index finger in a salute
in front of an apparently lifeless body suspended from
a cross with plastic cable ties. A sign hanging from
the body said the capital crime was collaborating with
Christians.
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Cyclone bears down on N. Caledonians: A cyclone bearing down on New Caledonia in the South
Pacific was upgraded on Monday to a category five
storm, the most destructive wind-speed level, prompting local authorities to order people to stay indoors
and take shelter.
Gusts close to the centre of Cyclone Donna were
estimated to be as strong as 300 km per hour (186
mph), according to the Vanuatu Meteorology and
Geo-hazards department, with the storm projected to
make landfall late on Tuesday.
“There is enormous uncertainty about the speed and
trajectory of Donna at the moment, we are unable to tell
people how long they will have to stay at home for,” Olivier Ciry, a spokesman at the Civil Defence and Risk
Management agency told Reuters by telephone.
The storm has whipped up huge swells in the Coral
Sea, with the centre roughly 200 km north of New
Caledonia, and 350 kms west of the Vanuatu capital,
Port Vila. It was moving southeast at about 12 kms
(7.5 miles) per hour.
This photo taken on May 2, shows Thai law enforcement standing behind
packages of ‘Ice’ or crystal meth, and ketamine during a press conference at
the Office of the Narcotics Control Board in Bangkok. Shielded by cash and
contacts in Laos, ‘Mr X’ is accused of spinning millions of dollars from drugs
before a very public downfall which has exposed the role of his secretive,
communist country in showering pills across Southeast Asia. (Inset): This file
photo taken on April 18, 2017 shows Xaysana Keophimpa, allegedly a key
figure among gangs buying drugs from Myanmar’s meth labs, arriving at a
criminal court in Bangkok after being detained at Suvarnabhumi Airport on
Jan 19. (AFP)
Laos Connection
Middlemen of ‘Golden Triangle’ accused of running drugs
Mr X, cartels hook SE Asia on pills
Jammu and Kashmir lawmaker
Sheikh Engineer shouts slogans before being detained during a march
towards the Civil Secretariat complex
on the first day of the traditional ‘Darbar Move’, as part of a protest against
the state government in Srinagar on
May 9. The civil secretariat, which
houses the office of the chief minister reopened in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-administered
Kashmir, after six months in Jammu,
the winter capital. The ‘Darbar Move’
is the age-old tradition of moving the
civil secretariat and other government
offices to Jammu during the winter
months and reopening them in Srinagar in summer. (AFP)
Yadav
Nicholson
Subcontinent
IS Afghanistan leader killed: The
head of Islamic State in Afghanistan
— described as the mastermind behind
high-profile attacks including an assault on
a military hospital that claimed at least 50
lives — has been killed, US and Afghan
officials said.
Abdul Hasib, whose group is affiliated
with IS in Iraq and Syria, was killed last
month in a targeted raid by special forces in
the eastern province of Nangarhar, the presidential palace in Kabul said in a statement.
The second leader of the jihadist group
to be killed by US and Afghan forces in
less than nine months, his death came
days after Washington dropped its largest
non-nuclear bomb on IS hideouts in the
same area.
Analysts described him as “obscure”, but
authorities ascribed responsibility to him
for assaults in Kabul, including the savage
attack on a military hospital in March when
assailants stabbed bedridden patients and
threw grenades into crowded wards.
“He had ordered the attack” on the hospital, the presidential statement said, adding
that Kabul will fight IS and other extremist
groups “until they are annihilated”.
NATO commander in Afghanistan General John Nicholson confirmed Hasib’s
killing and warned that “any ISIS member
that comes to Afghanistan will meet the
same fate”. (AFP)
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BANGKOK, May 8, (AFP): The
downfall of millionaire “Mr X”, long
shielded by cash and contacts in Laos,
has highlighted the role of the secretive, communist country in showering
pills across Southeast Asia.
Allegedly a key figure among gangs
buying drugs from Myanmar’s meth
labs, Laotian Xaysana Keophimpha —
dubbed ‘Mr X’ — is believed to have
used his graft-riddled country to shuttle narcotics south, first through Thailand then onto Malaysia.
The heavy-set 42-year-old was arrested by armed Thai police on Jan 19
at Bangkok’s main airport en route to
Laos where he lived freely, revelling
in a lifestyle of celebrity parties and
supercars.
He denies charges of drug possession and smuggling.
But subsequent police operations
have turned up several more men accused of running drugs through Laos,
an opaque country whose role in the
regional narcotics trade is gradually
emerging.
They are the suspected middlemen
of the ‘Golden Triangle’, shifting pills,
ice and heroin from the world’s second largest drug producing zone to a
regional market.
Among the accused is Xaysana’s
friend Sisouk Daoheoung — a minor
Laos celebrity with a penchant for
thoroughbred horses and a shared devotion to fast cars and fancy holidays
flaunted on social media.
If police are right, their ostentation
in one of Asia’s poorest countries was
funded by smuggling highly-addictive
caffeine-laced methamphetamine pills
— better known as ‘yaba’ or crazy
medicine — and crystal meth (ice).
“From Xaysana’s phone and Facebook records it was clear he and Sisouk are friends ... their (drug) groups
are connected,” Thai Police MajorGeneral Supakit Srijantranon told AFP
last week.
At $8 a pop in Thailand, the best
yaba pills rise in price the further they
saying only two border policemen and a
civilian were killed.
Kashif Nabi, a local administrator in
Pakistan’s Baluchistan province said the
surveyor teams, which included military
officers, arrived in the border villages on
Monday and were working “amicably.” He
move from source, bringing extraordinary rewards to the traffickers.
Stamped with a distinctive ‘WY’,
the pink and green pills of the Myanmar drug labs are supercharging
everyone from Malaysian farm hands
to Bangkok’s “Hi-So” (high society)
party crowd.
Each year regional seizures break
records, according to the UN’s crime
agency.
That points to better law enforcement, they say, but it also show that
the cartels can ramp up production at
will to cover losses.
The highest quality pills (15-20
percent meth purity) come from the
factories of the North and South Wa
— armed ethnic groups marshalling a
self-governing state on the MyanmarChina border — and by the Lahu hill
tribe.
Poor, corrupt and bordering five
countries, Laos makes for an ideal
transit route to the rest of Southeast
Asia.
Mekong
Drugs are shifted across the Mekong
river into Thailand then onto Malaysia
and beyond.
Thailand is being hit hard by the
trade.
Between October last year and
April, Thailand seized 74 million pills,
according to the kingdom’s Narcotics
Control Board (NCB), as well as two
tonnes of crystal meth and 320 kgs of
heroin.
Official estimates say the kingdom
has around 1.3 million addicts, with
drug convictions accounting for the
bulk of Thailand’s prison population
of 290,000 — the tenth highest incarceration rate in the world.
“Drugs are destroying everything.
They affect the security of our country, our society and people,” NCB
Secretary-General Sirinya Sitdhichai
told AFP.
Cops are fighting back and say they
have battered three major Laos-linked
said the situation is calm but that the border
crossing in the area remains closed. (AP)
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Yadav ordered to stand trial: India’s
top court Monday ordered that a key opposition leader and influential former minister
Pak, Afghanistan start survey: Pakistan and Afghanistan started a joint survey
agreed on following last week’s deadly
clashes along the two countries’ disputed
boundary in Pakistan’s southwest, officials
said Monday.
The two sides agreed to conduct a
geological survey of the border villages to
“remove discrepancies.”
Pakistan has said that Afghan forces
fired on Pakistani census workers and
troops escorting them, killing two soldiers
and nine civilians on Friday. Islamabad
also claimed 50 Afghan troops were killed
in retaliatory action, a claim Kabul denies,
Ainnurul Aisyah Yunos, wife of Turkish businessman Ihsan Aslan arrested under
the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act, breaks down while addressing
the media in Ara Damansara on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur on May 8. The
wife of a Turkish businessman detained in Malaysia for alleged terrorism offences made a tearful appeal to the government Monday to release him, saying
he is innocent. (AFP)
drug networks, confiscating tens of
millions of dollars-worth of assets including hotels, cars, cash and even a
horse riding school in Vientiane.
They are still hunting a fourth group
led by Usman Salameang, a Thai believed to be holed up in Laos, wanted
for moving gear through Thailand’s
violent border area into Malaysia.
“He is the only big boss we are still
trying to arrest,” Sirinya said.
Historically, communist Laos has
been reluctant to admit it has a drug
problem.
But under Prime Minister Thongloun
Sisoulith the country is keen to show it
is flushing out criminals and corrupt
officials.
The recent arrests are part of his gettough message to the drug gangs.
Last year Laos authorities reeled in
a record 144 kgs of crystal meth and
nearly 21 million yaba pills.
The once toothless Lao National
Commission for Drug Control and Supervision (LCDC), has been beefed up
under control of the Ministry of Public
Security.
The fall of Xaysana and co. is being
bundled up as victory for intelligencesharing between Laos and Thailand.
But with many western embassies
still unable to post specialist narcotics
police in Laos it is hard to get facts on
the country’s suspected role as a haven
for drug producers.
The LCDC did not respond to AFP
requests for comment.
And while Laos authorities sweep
up mid-ranking henchmen they do
not touch “the major organised crime
behind significant production and trafficking,” according to Jeremy Douglas
of the UNODC.
Questions remain over how highprofile suspects could have operated
beyond the law for so long.
One reason for that impunity is their
aversion to publicity and violence — in
contrast to their Latin American peers
— a western drug enforcement official
told AFP, requesting anonymity.
stand trial on historic corruption charges
that saw him disqualified from parliament.
Lalu Prasad Yadav was banished from
India’s lower house in 2013 after he was
convicted of defrauding a scheme to help
farmers, but other charges stemming from
the same “fodder scam” were put on hold.
Yadav — a former Bihar chief minister
whose party now rules the eastern state in
an alliance — and 44 others were found
to have ripped off the rural assistance
program to the tune of 380 million rupees
($6 million). (AFP)
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Nepal fines Everest climber: A South
African attempting to climb Mount Everest alone and without a permit has been
ordered off the mountain, had his passport
confiscated and will be fined $22,000, an
official said Monday.
Ryan Sean Davy, 43, told officials at
base camp that he had climbed alone as far
as camp two — 6,400 metres (21,000 feet)
— to acclimatise ahead of a summit push
before he was caught.
Foreigners have to pay the Nepal government $11,000 for permission to climb
the 8,848 metre (29,030 foot) peak — a
major earner for the impoverished country.
“I saw him alone near base camp so I
approached him and he ran away,” said
Gyanendra Shresth, the government liason
officer at base camp.
“I followed him with my friend and
found him hiding in a cave nearby,” he told
AFP.
“He had set up camp in an isolated place
to avoid government officials.” (AFP)