A NEW York court in Brooklyn has issued summons to the ISI chief and some top members of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) for appearing before the court next month, Jan 2011, in connection with the Mumbai attacks, according to media reports. The orders are part of a case filed an injured US citizen and the heirs of the four others who were killed in the terror strike on November 26, 2008. DG ISI Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, his predecessor Lieutenant General (retired) Nadeem Taj, Major Ali and Major Iqbal are among the Pakistani officials who have been summoned. The LeT chief Hafiz Saeed and his operational commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi are also among the list. The lawsuits, which seek unspecified damages, were filed under the Alien Tort Statute, an 18th century law that allows US citizens to sue in U.S. courts for acts that violate international law. The law originally was enacted to prosecute pirates but has been used more recently by Holocaust survivors and relatives of people killed or tortured under despotic regimes. The lawsuit has already set in motion a chain reaction because Pakistani journalist Karim Khan from North Waziristan has filed a lawsuit against the CIA station chief at Islamabad, blowing his cover, accusing him of being responsible for the death of his brother and son in a CIA drone attack in December 2009. The CIA Station Chief, Jonathan Banks, whose identity was incognito till now, had to be withdrawn for fear of reprisal. The US is in dire straits as its hold over world affairs is gradually slipping. The drubbing it received at Iraq and now in Afghanistan has left the US weak and weary. However, this is nothing compared to what the US is facing at the hands of Israel. Eric Margolis, in his Op-Ed, ‘In the Mid-East, the US is a helpless giant’, comments: “President Barack Obama has been demanding Israel stop building illegal Jewish settlements around Jerusalem and on the West Bank. Obama rightly concluded the ongoing agony of Palestine has turned the Muslim world against the United States. It is also the primary cause of what Washington calls ‘terrorism.’ I write about this extensively in my latest book, ‘American Raj.’ After the Suez invasion, Israel’s American partisans set about building an influence network that would ensure no American president could ever force Israel to do anything against its will. Over the next half century, the Israel lobby became the most powerful and feared lobby in America, dominating both the US Congress and media. The lobby’s brilliant success was again confirmed last week as Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of Israel’s rightist coalition, literally spit in Obama’s face, sneeringly rejecting the president’s pleas to create a viable Palestinian state. Vice President Joseph Biden was earlier humiliated on a trip to Israel to plead with Israel to stop building Jewish settlements. The US Congress and rightwing media actually applauded the public humiliation of their president and vice president.”
Now a frustrated group of senior American military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan’s tribal areas. They are disgruntled with the lack of progress in Afghanistan so they are looking for scapegoats in Pakistan. Having run out of options, they are now trying to pressurize Pakistan through a frivolous lawsuit, filed two years after the event. What the US forgets is that Pakistan is not going to hand over its ISI chiefs to face any trial in the US; however, more and more CIA operatives in Pakistan will feel the angst and antagonism of survivors of the collateral damage resulting from the drone attacks. – Thedailymail
