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Former Pakistan President Is Dead

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Pakistan’s former president General Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1999 and launched a fight against Islamist extremism, has died at the age of 79, Daily Mail reports.

General Musharraf was a controversial military ruler who led a reluctant Pakistan into aiding the US war in Afghanistan against the same Taliban fighters his nation had previously backed, even as Islamic militants twice targeted him for assassination.

The former special forces commando became president through the last of a string of military coups that hit Pakistan after its founding amid the bloody 1947 partition of India.

He ruled the nuclear-armed state after his 1999 coup through turbulent times, including tensions with India, an atomic proliferation scandal and an Islamic extremist insurgency.

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He stepped down in 2008 while facing possible impeachment.

During his time in office, he became an unlikely ally of the US and Nato, supporting them in the war against terror, and visited the UK during Tony Blair’s premiership.

After stepping down, Musharraf lived in self-imposed exile in Dubai to avoid criminal charges, despite attempting a political comeback in 2012.

His family announced last June that he had been in hospital for weeks while suffering from amyloidosis, an incurable condition that sees proteins build up in the body’s organs.

Shazia Siraj, a spokeswoman for the Pakistani consulate in Dubai, confirmed his death and said diplomats were providing support to his family.

“I have confronted death and defied it several times in the past because destiny and fate have always smiled on me,’ Gen Musharraf once wrote.

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“I only pray that I have more than the proverbial nine lives of a cat.”

Pakistan, a nation which is now home to 220 million people, drew US attention a little under two years after it seized power due to its border with Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden launched September 11, 2001, attacks 2001 from Afghanistan, sheltered by the country’s Taliban rulers, and General Musharraf knew what would come next.

America was sure to react violently, like a wounded bear,” he wrote in his autobiography.

“If the perpetrator turned out to be al-Qaeda, then that wounded bear would come charging straight toward us.”

By September 12, then-US secretary of state Colin Powell told Musharraf that Pakistan would either be “with us or against us”.

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He said another American official threatened to bomb Pakistan “back into the Stone Age” if it chose the latter.

Gen Musharraf chose the former. A month later, he stood by then-president George W Bush at the Waldorf Astoria in New York to declare Pakistan’s unwavering support to fight with the US against ‘terrorism in all its forms wherever it exists’.

Pakistan became a crucial transit point for Nato supplies heading to landlocked Afghanistan – even though Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency had backed the Taliban after they swept into power in Afghanistan in 1994.

Before that, the CIA and others funnelled money and arms through the ISI to Islamic fighters battling the 1980s Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The US-led invasion of Afghanistan saw Taliban fighters flee over the border into Pakistan, including bin Laden, whom the US killed in 2011 at a compound in Abbottabad.

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They regrouped and the offshoot Pakistani Taliban emerged, beginning a years-long insurgency in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The CIA began flying armed drones from Pakistan with Musharraf’s blessing, using an airstrip built by the founding president of the United Arab Emirates for falconing in Pakistan’s Balochistan province.

The programme helped beat back the militants but saw more than 400 strikes in Pakistan alone kill at least 2,366 people, including 245 civilians, according to the Washington-based New America Foundation think tank.

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Man Stabs Four To Death In US

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Four people, including a teenage girl, were killed and at least five injured after a man went on a stabbing spree at multiple addresses in the US state of Illinois, police have said.

The stabbings took place on Wednesday afternoon, Rockford City Police said in a statement, adding that a 22-year-old suspect was taken into custody.

The statement did not say anything about a possible motive.

Rockford is located about 90 miles northwest of Chicago.

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Those killed included a 15-year-old girl, a 63-year-old woman, and two men aged 49 and 22, according to the police.

The police statement said that five people had been wounded, but US media later cited the police saying seven were wounded.

Details later

AFP

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[JUST IN] Okuama Killings: Army Declares Eight Persons Wanted [FULL LIST]

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The Nigerian Army has declared Eight persons wanted in connection with the killing of 17 soldiers in the Okuama community in Delta state.

The Nigerian Army disclosed this on its official X account on Thursday.

The persons declared wanted include seven men and one woman.

Full list:

They are Akevwru Daniel Omotegbono, Prof Ekpekpo Arthur, Andaowei Dennis Bakriki, Igoli Ebi (female), Akata Malawa David, Sinclear Oliki, Clement Ikolo Oghenerukevwe and Reuben Baru.

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Okuama killings: Background
The suspected mastermind of the bloodbath, a militant leader, and his gang members, who are currently on the run, seem to have their operational stamping ground at Igbomotoru, a riverside community in the Southern-Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa State.

However, the Nigerian Army, which has spread its dragnet for the fleeing suspects, went as far as Port-Harcourt, Rivers State, to pick up three persons, last Tuesday, in connection with the killing of the soldiers.

READ ALSO: Delta Killings: Military Sets To Build Barracks On Okuama As Demolition Of Houses Continues

So far, the demanding search for the killers of the soldiers in the quiet Okuama has spread to the creeks, hideouts, and communities in Delta State, Bayelsa, and Rivers states, and is likely to extend to other states in the Niger-Delta, and outside the region if need be, according to sources.

According to VANGUARD, many believe the killing of the soldiers was beyond the land dispute between Okuama and Okoloba in the Bomadi local government area, as insiders point to divergences on oil bunkering.

Lt. Col Ali was reportedly bent on stopping oil thieves in his operational area and had made appreciable inroads. There was suspicion that his killing with other military personnel could be a setup.

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We know who did it – General Musa, CDS

The Chief of the Defense Staff, CDS, General Christopher Gwabin Musa, who had given his troops marching orders to track down the killers, alluded to this notion.

Musa said: “I know him, the C.O himself, Lt. Col. Ali. Because of recent, we emphasized that we want oil production in Nigeria to increase so that we will be able to have enough foreign exchange for things to go down. Because we all know the challenges we are facing.

READ ALSO: Okuoma Ambush: Troops Recover Decomposing Hearts Of Killed Soldiers

“And so, he insisted that all illegal activities within his general area must stop. He directed all the troops and they were stopping illegal bunkering, and then these are the people benefiting from it. And so when this issue came up, it became an opportunity for them to do away with him, which is exactly what happened.

“We know who did it, we are following up on him, and it is just a matter of time, we are sure we are going to get him. They took away our arms, we must get those arms back, and we must get these guys so that they would be prosecuted accordingly.”

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From our findings, the countryside people of Okuama are not sophisticated enough to carry out this kind of attack on military officers.

And from the CDS declaration that “we know who did it..,” he confirmed that the premeditated killing was connected to oil bunkering, so why did the troops go after helpless Okuama women and children, and even razed the community?

However, the Army, on Friday, admitted knowledge of the viral video by a militant leader who confessed to participating in killing the 16 soldiers.

It noted: “The video among other things helps to narrow investigation to persons of interest and their cohorts.

“Accordingly, the state governments and host communities of these personalities are required to assist investigation in flushing out these culprits.

“There can be no hiding place for perpetrators of such dastardly act against the nation. This is a clarion call to duty by members of those communities and the state governments”.

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Iran Sentences Police Officer To Death For Killing Protester

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An Iranian court has sentenced a police chief in northern Iran to death after he was charged with killing a man during mass protests in 2022, local media reported Wednesday.

Local police chief Jafar Javanmardi was arrested in December 2022 over the killing of a protester during the widespread demonstrations sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in custody.

Iranian Kurd Amini, 22, died in custody in September that year following her arrest for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women.

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Javanmardi was sentenced to death “in accordance with the Islamic law of retribution, known as the ‘qisas’ law, on the charge of premeditated murder”, the lawyer for the victim’s family, Majid Ahmadi, told the reformist Shargh daily.

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The protestor, Mehran Samak, 27, succumbed to injuries he sustained after being hit by shotgun pellets during a rally in the northern city of Bandar Anzali on November 30, 2022.

Rights groups based outside of Iran said Samak was shot dead by Iranian security forces after honking his car horn in celebration of Iran’s loss to the United States in the 2022 World Cup held in Qatar while at the Amini protest.

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The defeat eliminated Iran from the football tournament and drew a mixed response from government supporters and opponents.

The lawyer, Ahmadi, said at the time that the police official was charged with “violating the rules for firearms usage, resulting in the death of Samak”.

In mid-January, the judiciary’s Mizan Online website said the Supreme Court had annulled a death sentence and referred the case to another court.

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Gilan province, where Bandar Anzali is located, was a flashpoint of the nationwide protest movement that shook Iran.

Hundreds of people were killed during the months-long protests, including dozens of security forces, while thousands were arrested and nine men were executed in cases linked to the demonstrations.

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