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Pakistan Tag

Pakistan's highest court has ordered the release of an Islamist sentenced to death for the kidnapping and beheading of the American journalist Daniel Pearl. Omar Saeed Sheikh, the main suspect in the killing, and three other co-conspirators "are to be released immediately if they are not required in any other case," the Pakistan Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

In a surprise move, India has scrapped special constitutional status granted to the Muslim-majority Kashmir region. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government issued a presidential order on Monday revoking decades-old legislative provisions granting autonomy to the northern Indian state formally known as Jammu and Kashmir. The move has been accompanied by a massive military build up. Ahead of the announcement, New Delhi dispatched 10,000 troops to the region, adding to estimated 210,000 army and para-military soldiers already deployed there.

India vowed revenge against Pakistan after a suicide attack killed 44 Indian soldiers in the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir on Friday. The Pakistan-based terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed, or the Army of Mohammed, claimed responsibility for the car bombing. The Indian media called it the worst attack on armed forces in recent decades.

Pakistan officials announced that the Taliban has freed an American woman, her Canadian husband, and their children after five years of imprisonment. From ABC News:
Caitlan Coleman, 31, and her husband Joshua Boyle, 34, who were abducted while hiking in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province in 2012, were secured in an exchange between Pakistani military and U.S. commandos late Wednesday in a secret operation to bring them home after one of the longest -- and strangest -- American hostage ordeals in recent history, counterterrorism officials revealed.

Eliminating Islamist terrorism was high on the agenda when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Washington three months ago. “We will destroy radical Islamic terrorism,” President Donald Trump had said in his joint statement with Premier Modi. Last night, President Trump told India to take concrete steps in the region towards that final goal. President Trump’s speech outlining the new strategy in Afghanistan received wide support and approval in India. "India welcomes Trump's South Asia policy," India’s leading newspaper Times of India commented:
India today welcomed US President Donald Trump's determination to enhance efforts to overcome the challenges facing Afghanistan and confront issues of safe havens and other forms of cross-border support enjoyed by terrorists.

"Blasphemous" social media posts can get you killed in Pakistan. The first of its kind in the middle eastern state, Pakistan recently sentenced a man to death for making "derogatory" remarks about "Sunni religious figures and the prophet of Islam's wives," reports leading German news purveyor, DW. Taimoor Raza, a Shiite Pakistani, was charged and sentenced to death for engaging in a Facebook argument with a government official who later brought charges against him.

Four IT staff for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other lawmakers lost their jobs in February after suspicions arose that they breached security on the House IT network. The U.S. Capitol Police named Hina Alvi, her husband Imran Awan, and his brothers Abid and Jamal "as subjects of a criminal probe." Now relatives have said that Alvi has fled the United States with her daughters and sought protection from the Pakistani government.

A mob of ten students beat Pakistani student Mashal Khan to death on the Abdul Wali Kahn University campus and injured another identified as Abdullah. They accused him of "sharing blasphemous content on social media." Reuters reported:
A group of about 10 students shouted "Allahu Akbar" during the attack on fellow student Mashal Khan, who was stripped naked and beaten with planks until his skull caved in as other students looked on, video obtained by Reuters showed.