Pakistan captures al-Qaida suspects
Islamabad, Pakistan Pakistani security agencies have arrested two al-Qaida suspects and are investigating whether one is a Syrian believed to be a key figure in Osama bin Laden’s terror network in Europe, intelligence officials and a senior government official said today.
The two suspects were captured this week during a raid on a house in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province, said one of the intelligence officials.
A senior government official confirmed the arrests and said authorities were investigating whether one of the suspects was Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, alleged to have had a key role in the March 11, 2004, Madrid bombings that left 191 people dead and more than 1,500 people injured. .
The U.S. Justice Department’s Rewards for Justice Web site describes Nasar as an al-Qaida member and former trainer at terrorist camps in Afghanistan who instructed extremists in using poisons and chemicals. It also says he is likely to be in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Nasar, 47, was born in Syria and also has Spanish nationality. His name has also been linked to the July 7 bombings in London that left 52 people dead.
Clinton among those eulogizing Rosa Parks
Detroit A church packed with 4,000 mourners celebrated the life of Rosa Parks Wednesday in an impassioned, song-filled funeral, with a crowd of notables giving thanks for the humble woman whose dignity and defiance helped transform a nation.
“The woman we honored today held no public office, she wasn’t a wealthy woman, didn’t appear in the society pages,” said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. “And yet when the history of this country is written, it is this small, quiet woman whose name will be remembered long after the names of senators and presidents have been forgotten.”
The funeral, which stretched four hours past its three-hour scheduled time, followed a week of remembrances during which Parks’ coffin was brought from Detroit, where she died Oct. 24; to Montgomery, Ala., where she sparked the civil rights movement 50 years ago by refusing to give her bus seat to a white man; to Washington, where she became the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda.
Speakers described Parks, who died at 92, as both a warrior and a woman of peace who never stopped working toward a future of racial equality.
“The world knows of Rosa Parks because of a single, simple act of dignity and courage that struck a lethal blow to the foundations of legal bigotry,” said former President Clinton, who presented Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996.
Iran’s diplomatic corps purged of reformers
Tehran, Iran Iran’s government announced Wednesday that 40 ambassadors and senior diplomats, including supporters of warmer ties with the West, will be fired, continuing a purge of reformers as the regime takes an increasingly tough stance at home and abroad.
The diplomatic changes are part of a government shake-up by ultraconservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that includes putting Islamic hard-liners in key posts at security agencies. Some Iranians the president will bring back strict social policies.
Ahmadinejad has steered the Persian state into a more confrontational stance in its dealings with other nations, particularly in facing suspicions about whether Iran’s nuclear program is illicitly trying to develop nuclear weapons, a charge the regime denies.