Mysterious death of PLF leader

When 55-year-old Mohamed Aboul Abbas died mysteriously in a US prison camp in Iraq, nobody bothered to call his family. His American captors had given no indication to the International Red Cross that he had been unwell and his wife Reem first heard that he was dead when she watched an Arab television news show.

Yet in his last letter to his family, written just seven weeks ago and shown to The Independent in Baghdad, the Palestinian militant wrote that "I am in good form and in good health," adding that he hoped to be freed soon.

So what happened to Mohamed Aboul Abbas? Although a prominent colleague of Yasser Arafat for more than three decades, the world will forever link his name with the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985 when members of his small 'Palestine Liberation Front' commandeered the vessel in the Mediterranean and, in a cruel killing that was to cause international outrage, shot dead an elderly American Jew in a wheelchair and tipped his corpse into the sea.

The other passengers were eventually released in Egypt after Aboul Abbas negotiated with the authorities in Cairo to allow the hijackers to go free. In vain did he point out that the hijackers' plan was to stow-away on the liner - not harm the passengers - and then storm ashore in Israel when the ship made its port of call at Haifa, that it was only their discovery by a crew member that prompted them to take over the vessel.

"The media didn't tell the world that I saved 600 passengers, only that a disabled man was killed," he was to complain later. Yet in a newspaper interview, he was also reported to have said that Klinghoffer "was handicapped but he was inciting and provoking the other passengers.

So the decision was made to kill him." Yet within 10 years, the Israelis themselves would allow Aboul Abbas, now a member of the Palestine National Council, to enter the occupied territories to participate in elections in the Gaza Strip. He even visited his old family home in Haifa in Israel.

He supported Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements and favoured the annulment of the anti-Israeli articles in the PLO's charter. Like so many of Arafat's colleagues, he had undergone that mystical Middle East transformation from 'super-terrorist' to peacenik.

So why was he ever incarcerated in the harsh confines of America's airport prison camp outside Baghdad? He was never charged with any crime, never offered a lawyer, never allowed direct contact with his wife and family, allowed to communicate with the outside world only via the Red Cross. It was they who telephoned his wife, Reem, in Beirut to tell her that her husband was dead.

"I know nothing about this - nothing," she wailed down the telephone to The Independent from Beirut. "How did he die? Why were we told nothing? When I first heard this terrible news on television I thought it had to be a rumour - his happens a lot out here. But then the Red Cross called at midnight and told me it was true."

Mohamed Aboul Abbas is the most prominent prisoner to die in US custody in Iraq and joins a growing list of unexplained deaths among the 15,000 Iraqis and Palestinians held by US military forces. The occupation authorities in Iraq would only say that they were to hold a post mortem on Aboul Abbas' remains.

The 'Palestinian Liberation Front' has long had offices in Baghdad, along with Arafat's PLO; the head of the PLF's 'political bureau', Mohamed Sobhi, said that Mohamed Aboul Abbas' arrest by US troops on April 14 last year had "no reason in law other than the need of the American soldiers at that time to look for false victories."

We all knew that Aboul Abbas had been to Palestine in 1995 for the PNC elections in Gaza and that the United States and Israel both allowed this. After that, he travelled to Palestinian areas and to other Arab states many times. We had told all this to the Americans here and demanded that he be released. In his last letter home, he said he hoped to be freed soon. So what happened to him?"

Reem Aboul Abbas, who has a child by her husband and two by an earlier marriage, says that he was still living in Baghdad when American troops entered the city on April 9 last year. "He was trying to keep away from them because many people - Iraqis and Palestinians - were being arrested, people who had done nothing.

Then American troops raided our home. Mohamed wasn't there but I saw it all on Fox Television. Would you believe I saw my own home on television and they had moved things around and draped a Palestinian flag over a mirror and then invited Fox Television to film it.

On the evening of April 14, Mohamed called me from a Thuraya phone from a friend's home. It was a big mistake. I think that's how they tracked him down and found him. Not long afterwards, American soldiers came up the stairs."

The US occupation authorities initially announced the capture of the "important terrorist Aboul Abbas", making no mention of his return to the occupied territories or that the Israelis themselves- who might have been more anxious than the Americans to see him in prison- had freely allowed the PLF leader to enter their territory as a peace negotiator. "First he was a 'terrorist'," his wife Reem says.

"Then he was a man of peace. Then when the Americans arrested him, they made him a 'terrorist' again. What is this nonsense?". Two years ago, according to Mr Sobhi, Aboul Abbas had suffered an attack of angina and spent 12 days undergoing treatment at the Abu Nafis Hospital in Baghdad with Reem at his side.

He had suffered no other health problems and in a last request to his family via the Red Cross, he had asked them to send him two boxes of Marlboro cigarettes, running shorts, a track suit and a dishtash robe. The Independent has seen his request and its acknowledgment by US detention authorities; it doesn't read like the list of a sick man.

For months after the announcement of his arrest, Reem Aboul Abbas pleaded with family friends and the Red Cross to discover his whereabouts. When she asked The Independent for help, I discovered that he was being held in a special security wing at Baghdad International Airport along with former prominent Baath party officials.

He was in a sealed room with Saadoun Shakr, one of Saddam's former interior ministers. This was reconfirmed by Issa Milhem, Aboul Abbas' 40-year old nephew who was born in Baghdad, the city to which the family fled from their home village of at-Tira near Haifa in 1949.

Mr. Milhem holds hundreds of snapshots of his uncle, some with Iraqi ministers-- Tariq Aziz prominent among them-- and one with Saadoun Shakr, the very man with whom Aboul Abbas was later to be imprisoned.

His last letter to his family, dated January 19 and written in neat Arabic on one side of a Red Cross sheet of paper, gives no indication of his fate. Addressed to his brother Khaled in Holland, it is a prisoner's familiar appeal for letters and news, of expressions of affection and hope.

"Dear Khaled," it begins, "I received your letter on January 17 and on the same day I received three letters from my wife in Beirut after a period in which I got no letters for three months. I was very happy because of your letter and it was a surprise because I didn't expect it.

Thank you so much for this and for your kindness in writing to me. Dear Khaled, first I present my kisses to the head of your dear mother and I hope she's ready to prepare the 'dolma' and the red chicken that I love for my first lunch (in freedom) will be at her home. What is the news about my family and my dearest Issa?...Very special greetings to him, his wife and children and for your brothers and sisters and their families because they are my family, too, and my dearest ones."

In the same letter, Aboul Abbas complains that he has received no replies to letters he sent to Mohamed Sobhi-- he uses Sobhi's patronymic 'Abu Khodr'-- and urges his brother to call Reem in Beirut.

"Tell her that I received her letters and that I have sent new letters to her," Aboul Abbas writes in the most important section of his message. "I hope you can send me a dishtash ... I am in good form and in good health and I really need to know news of my family and friends.

I have great hopes of being released soon-- with God's will." Signing himself 'Aboul Abbas,' he includes his wife's Beirut telephone number so that Khaled can call her immediately. The letter bears the US detention authority coding "US-0039C1.

Mr. Sobhi holds the United States responsible for Aboul Abbas' death and is asking the Palestinian Authority to institute its own enquiry into the PLF leader's death.

"We blame the Americans for this," he says. "We put the responsibility of his death on the US troops. No-one ever said his health was declining. I've been told the Americans want to send the body to Palestine although his wife may want him to be buried in Lebanon."

Mohamed Aboul Abbas appears to have had no premonition of his imminent death. But 49 days after he wrote his letter of hope, he was dead. - (c) The Independent.

Indian jurist says judiciary is free

He is one of the national spokespersons for the Indian National Congress. In his thirties he became the youngest additional solicitor general in post-independence India. In 1999, he was awarded the Global Leader for Tomorrow Award at the World Economic Forum, Davos. He is Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who visited Karachi to attend the recent 10th Saarclaw Conference.

Dr A.M. Singhvi is vice-president of Saarclaw and believes that even though the decisions reached at its annual conferences are not binding on member countries, they could help alter public opinion over a host of issues.

During an interview with Dawn, the Indian jurist explained: "Ultimately all social and economic changes come on the back of public opinion. And, remember lawyers and judges make up one of the most powerful groups of opinion-makers".

Dr Singhvi is of the view that the law is a powerful tool for social change. "Bad practices in a society, through proper law-making, can be characterized as social evils." Whenever a practice is termed a 'social evil' in law, awareness is created against it. This is particularly valuable when legislators are ahead of their times in outlawing stultifying customs.

In 2002, reforms were introduced in the Indian judicial system after which its performance has improved considerably, says the soft-spoken Dr Singhvi. "Now, there are time limits for replies. Similarly, with a view to decreasing the backlog of cases, a procedure has been introduced under which many cases can be taken out of the judicial system for arbitration or reconciliation.

"The American judicial system works because only five per cent of the cases actually go to trial. The rest are either resolved out of court or undergo arbitration etc." The Indian judiciary, in Dr Singhvi's opinion, is fiercely independent. "This has been the case throughout our history, excluding a few periods when there were some aberrations."

Until 1991 the president of India, that is, the central government, used to appoint superior court judges. "But now, as a result of a judgement, president appoints judges in consultation with the superior judiciary.

Interestingly, 'consultation' is now understood to mean 'concurrence'. It follows then that appointments are being made by the superior judiciary itself."

One piece of Indian legislation which has attracted attention in several countries of the world is called the Doctrine of Basic Structure of the Constitution, says Dr Singhvi, who was educated in Canada and the United States.

"Under this doctrine a proposed amendment (to the constitution) may itself be deemed unconstitutional if it violates the spirit of the constitution." As a consequence, amendments which militate against democracy, secularism and republicanism cannot be expected to become a part of the Indian Constitution.

"Secularism is not merely a word, and not just a slogan, but is actually enshrined in the constitution and has been repeatedly addressed in it. No government in India can be expected to patronize a religion or a religious group. "Barring aberrations, the people are free to express their views and to follow their religions."

Dr Singhvi feels that despite some reverses recently, things have changed for the better for the Congress party. "The environment has changed considerably. Many political parties that were part of the NDA government have left the alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata Party."

Many major alliances are in the offing featuring the Congress Party. Sonia Gandhi is travelling throughout the country and in her road shows projecting the real image of the party. Key people have been appointed to do the same in key states. "There is a great push from Sonia Gandhi and her colleagues. And we expect good results in the coming national elections," says the die hard Congress man.

Mockery of SSC examinations

Commenting on the ongoing boycott of the SSC examinations by secondary school teachers, Kawish writes that the period of examinations has become a season of teachers' protests in Sindh.

This year, on the one hand, their protests went beyond demonstrations and rallies and the teachers took the extreme step of boycotting the examinations, and on the other, the provincial education department has tried to foil the boycott by assigning the duty of invigilators to revenue staff, watchmen, peons and teachers of private schools.

The daily says that the education department remained a comparatively neglected one in the past but due to the funding for education sector by international donor agencies, the department has recently acquired importance.

However, the benefit of the situation has not been passed on to teachers who are still facing old problems and the customary step-motherly attitude of the education authorities.

According to the paper, this is evident from the fact that after negotiations with the teachers, the education minister accepted their demands, except that of a job quota for their offspring, but failed to issue a notification in this regard which led to the boycott.

However, can the examinations conducted through non-teaching staff, with the candidates being allowed to use 'every' facility to prevent them from boycotting the papers, be really called an examination in the true sense of the word? asks Kawish.

Moreover, it points out, the stage of assessing the answer sheets is yet to come for which the authorities will have to turn to the teachers because the task cannot be assigned to non-teaching staff.

The daily urges the education ministry to take urgent steps to resolve the crisis by issuing a notification regarding the accepted demands of the teachers, like promotion and move over.

The government should also sympathetically consider the demand of job quota for teachers' offspring. Commenting on the stance of the education minister that the constitution has no provision for any quota except the rural-urban one, the daily asks whether there is any provision in the constitution for the unannounced job quota for ministers, advisers and MPAs of theruling coalition.

Awami Awaz says that studying Sindhi language is compulsory for the Sindhi-speaking students till intermediate and for others till matric in Sindh, but the education authorities seem to be taking steps to oust the subject from Karachi.

The Board of Intermediate Education, Karachi, in the recently announced results, has declared the first and second year students unsuccessful in last year's Sindhi paper on the grounds that they had not taken the paper though they had taken the paper.

Besides, the board has not included the subject in the examination forms of this year. The daily terms it a conspiracy aimed at ending the teaching of Sindhi in Karachi. It urges Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, who is also the head of the board, to take action against the discriminatory attitude.

Ibrat deplores that Punjab has rejected the Indus River System Authority's proposal to review the 1991 water accord, and asks the parliamentary committee on water resources to ensure judicious water distribution among the provinces. It says that lack of fairness in this regard has compelled Sindh to oppose the Kalabagh dam and Greater Thal canal projects.