Pakistan on Thursday sacked the government doctor who had helped the Central Intelligence Agency track down Osama bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad in May last year, amid calls for trying him for treason.
The crucial joint session of Pakistan Parliament that will endorse new terms of engagement with the United States began in Islamabad on Tuesday, following a string of crises, including the November 26 strike by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which took relations to an all-time low. The joint session of the Senate and National Assembly, summoned by President Asif Ali Zardari, will debate the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee.
Bruce Riedel, erstwhile Central Intelligence Agency veteran and senior National Security Council official in the Clinton Administration, who spearheaded President Obama's strategic review on Afghanistan and Pakistan, has said the US-India strategic partnership, "a core relationship for the United States," today faces "its most difficult problem ever that is a ticking bomb next door in Pakistan -- a time bomb which could explode at any moment."
In secret concessions to Pakistan, the US has tightened rules on drone strikes inside the country, apparently making them more selective as part of efforts to shore up its fragile relationship with Islamabad.
An unusually powerful United States delegation has arrived in Pakistan to deliver the warning that the United States would act unilaterally, if necessary, to attack extremist groups that use the country as a haven to kill Americans, according to a senior American official.
In a major operation, Delhi police has arrested two suspected Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorists who were allegedly planning to carry out terror strikes in the capital by targeting vital installations and VVIPs. Delhi police sources said the operation was launched to nab the two LeT men after receiving inputs from central intelligence agencies that the duo have entered the capital to carry out strikes.
A German national was deported from Tamil Nadu in the wee hours on Tuesday after he was picked up by police in Nagercoil for his alleged "active involvement" in the protests against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant project.
A German national was picked up by the Tamil Nadu police in Nagercoil for allegedly assisting the protests against the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant and deported from the country in the wee hours of Tuesday.
Almost two weeks after four people including an Israeli diplomat were injured in a car blast in Delhi, the probe into the terror attack seems to have hit a dead end. Intelligence officials in Israel, who had immediately blamed Iran for the attack, and the United States have shared information about the attack with their Indian counterparts.
The Central Intelligence Agency managed to kill one of its most wanted terrorists in the world -- Al Qaeda leader Anwar al Awlaki -- in a drone strike attack in September 2011 after hatching a fake marriage plot with a Croatian woman. Al Awlaki was linked with 2009's Fort Hood shooting and the foiled airplane underwear bomb that happened later in the same year.
The Mumbai international airport was on Sunday put under heightened security alert following inputs from central intelligence agencies about a possible airborne attack on the country's busiest airport. The alert was issued from New Delhi, sources said.
The United States and India need to stop being suspicions of each other's intentions and deepen intelligence sharing if they are to effectively combat terrorism, a leading South Asia expert and erstwhile Central Intelligence Agency analyst has told the US Congress.
The case of Pakistani doctor Shakeel Afridi took a new twist on Wednesday when a detailed order about his arrest and conviction stated that he has been punished for his links with a militant outfit, not for working with the Central Intelligence Agency and helping it locate Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. The order has revealed that Dr Afridi will be produced before another court for the trial over his links with the CIA.
Amir Mir reports how a physician became a CIA mole and helped locate the most wanted man in the world.
Strongly reacting to Pakistan jailing a doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency find Osama bin Laden to 33 years, the United States has said there was no basis for the verdict and it will raise the issue with the leadership in Islamabad. "We continue to see no basis for (Shakil) Afridi to be held," State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told reporters.
Dr Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani surgeon who helped the US Central Intelligence Agency find Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, has been sentenced to 33 years in prison for 'treason'.
Asked by Frank Sesno, former CNN anchor who moderated the conversation, if the story that Pakistan handed over parts of the helicopter that went down in bin Laden's compound -- or gave access -- to the Chinesse before returning it to the US was true, United States Defence Secretary Leon Panetta first started shifting uneasily in his seat and then started laughing and said, "this is a very complicated relationship with Pakistan."
Amir Mir unravels the complicated web of spy games and covert manoeuvring that United States and Pakistan are playing against each other
The Central Intelligence Agency is contemplating trapping or targeting Pakistan nationals serving as diplomats abroad in retaliation against double-murder accused US diplomat Raymond Davis' continued detention in a Lahore prison.
Terming as "alarmist" a media report that the Army moved two units towards Delhi in January without informing the government, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said such reports "should not be taken at face value".
A recent ProPublica investigation termed Pakistani-American Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative and 26/11 accused David Coleman Headley as a double agent working for both the American Central Intelligence Agency and the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence.
"We should tell the Pakistani army leadership that if we learn one of their officers is involved in harboring terrorists, planning terror operations, or tipping terrorist bomb factories off to drone raids, we will make it personal," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and now a senior fellow in the Saban Center at the Brookings Institute
Pakistan's military has initiated a 'cleansing process' and rounded up several people believed to be working for America's Central Intelligence Agency in a move that indicates serious tension between the two countries.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence should focus on nabbing some of the world's most wanted terrorists -- Ayman al-Zawahiri, Siraj Haqqani, Major Iqbal, Sajid Mir and Dawood Ibrahim -- hiding in the country, a United States foreign policy magazine has demanded.
Pakistani on Wednesday dismissed as "totally baseless" a United States media report which claimed that an army Major was among five arrested informants who had provided information to the Central Intelligence Agency ahead of the American raid that killed Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. A spokesman for the Inter Services Intelligence's public relations "strongly refuted" the news report, saying "there is no army officer detained and the story is false and totally baseless."
One of the detainees was reported to be a Pakistani army major whom officials said copied licence plates of cars visiting the Al Qaeda leader's compound in Abbottabad, Islamabad, the New York Times, citing officials, has reported
Central Intelligence Agency chief Leon Panetta has confronted Pakistan's military leadership with evidence of collusion between militants and security officials in the country, causing fresh strains in the troubled United States-Pak ties.
A Pakistani judicial commission probing the death of Osama bin Laden has directed that a case of "high treason" be slapped on a doctor detained on charges of working for the American Central Intelligence Agency to obtain DNA samples of people living in the Al Qaeda leader's compound in Abbottabad.
Dawood Ibrahim, the second most wanted terrorist in India after Lashkar-e-Tayiba founder Hafiz Saeed, is hiding in Pakistan, according to the Indian administration. But Pakistan has denied reports about granting refuge to Dawood. The Intelligence Bureau has now prepared a fresh dossier on the underworld don -- the mastermind of the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai -- and handed it over to the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA is reportedly tracking the underworld don.
Pakistan People's Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said he can "bridge the gap" between his country and the United States even as he defended the handling of the case of Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency to track down Osama bin Laden and was sentenced to 33 years in jail.
Though there has been a clamour for the Central Intelligence Agency to release secret images and videos of Al Qaeda's Osama bin Laden's death, the agency wants to keep them classified and secret.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Wednesday vehemently refuted Union Home Minister P Chidambaram's claim that the Centre had forewarned the Uttar Pradesh government against a possible terrorist strike in Varanasi.
Pakistan has described as "disquieting" Central Intelligence Agency chief Leon Panetta's revelation that no intelligence about the United States raid that killed Osama bin Laden was shared with Islamabad for fear that the operation would be jeopardised.
Soon after Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta provided a classified briefing to the House leadership in the US Congress on the covert mission inside Pakistan that killed Al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden, he was peppered with a volley of questions. He was quizzed about Pakistani duplicity, particularly the Inter-Services Intelligence's perfidy about how it could have not known about bin Laden living right under their nose in Abbottabad.
The Maharashtra Police has received inputs from Central intelligence agencies about possibility of terror attacks on luxury buses plying between Mumbai and Ahmedabad and steps have been taken to foil any such bid.
Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta will become the new United States defence secretary, replacing Robert Gates, in a major shake-up of President Barack Obama's security team, according to a media report.The top US military commander in Afghanistan General David Petraeus is set to take over as the new CIA Director. The television network said Petraeus will be replaced as the US commander in Afghanistan by Lieutenant General John Allen.
Killing of top Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan in recent past has shaken the sense of security of the terrorist leaders in Af-Pak tribal areas, a development which could encourage them to move to other parts of the world, a top Central Intelligence Agency official said Tuesday.
With the National Counter-Terrorism Centre getting a nod from the government, Home Minister P Chidambaram has fulfilled his dream of becoming India's counter-terror czar. But his efforts to pattern this body on the lines of the one in the United States, which was formed after 9/11, has failed and how! B Raman analyses
The United States has condemned the death sentence handed to American-Iranian ex-Marine Amir Mirzai Hekmati in Iran and asked Tehran to release him immediately.
Sabrina De Sousa, a United States consular officer in Milan, was abandoned by her own government and left to fend for herself in an alleged CIA kidnapping case in Italy. Rediff.com's George Joseph narrates her story.
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