Thaksin faces arrest if he returns

BANGKOK (AFP) - Deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra would face arrest on corruption and fraud charges if he returned to Thailand, a senior official at the Attorney General’s office said Thursday.
“If they were in Thailand, police can arrest him and his wife because both are still wanted on Thai arrest warrants,” Samphan Sarathana, chief of international affairs for the Attorney General, told AFP.
Thaksin told reporters in Hong Kong on Tuesday that he planned to return home by April, after his allies in the People Power Party (PPP) claimed victory in elections on Sunday, the first since a coup in September 2006.
But the self-made billionaire, who has been living in exile, and his wife Pojaman are on an immigration blacklist, meaning that they can be immediately arrested if they try to enter Thailand.
Samphan’s agency has been pushing for the couple’s extradition from Britain, where Thaksin owns a home and purchased Manchester City football club.
The Supreme Court issued arrest warrants for Thaksin and Pojaman in August over separate graft charges linked to a real estate deal in 2003. In September a Thai criminal court issued another arrest warrant against the former first couple over charges tied to alleged fraudulent filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2003.
Thaksin and his wife deny any wrongdoing and say the charges are politically motivated.
PPP won 233 of the 480 seats in the Thai parliament in Sunday’s vote. It is trying to cobble together a coalition government.

Police deployed to stop Christian-Hindu violence in India

BHUBANESWAR (AFP) - Hundreds of police were deployed in eastern India on Thursday to stop fresh clashes between Hindus and Christians after churches were attacked and a man killed in Christmas Day attacks.
“Enough police both from the state and the central reserve police force have been deployed in the affected towns and villages... to maintain order. The situation is under control,” Orissa state chief minister Naveen Patnaik said.
Some 800 police were deployed and more were on their way to the violence-hit area in Kandhamal district, 300km southwest of the state capital Bhubaneswar, officials said.
A curfew was also imposed Wednesday after Hindus, backed by the hard-line Vishwa Hindu Parishad or World Hindu Council, torched six churches — mostly mud and thatch structures — and ransacked another four on Christmas night in violence that left one man dead and 30 injured.
Despite the curfew, more scuffles and stone-throwing broke out between Hindus and Christians late Wednesday and some fences surrounding churches and temples were torn down, police said, but no injuries were reported.
Christian missionaries have long found converts among India’s neglected tribal communities or “untouchable” Hindus — known as Dalits — who still face huge discrimination. Some missionaries talk of “liberating” low-caste Hindus.
In Kandhamal, the majority of Christian converts are Dalits.
Sectarian clashes erupt periodically in the billion-plus country of multiple faiths, where 2.3pc are practising Christians. Rising tensions have prompted several Indian state governments to enact anti-conversion laws.
A Hindu man is serving a life sentence for burning alive an Australian Christian missionary and his two sons as well as a Catholic priest in Orissa in 1999.
Some reports said the latest violence began after a Hindu leader who had campaigned against so-called “forced” conversions of low-caste Hindus to Christianity was attacked on Christmas Eve.

11 Shia fighters killed in Iraq by US army

BAGHDAD (AFP) - US forces on Thursday killed 11 Shia fighters allegedly backed by Iranian Republican Guard units and arrested two suspected militants involved in the abduction of three American soldiers.
The militants were killed in an early morning raid in the town of Kut south of Baghdad, the military told AFP.
“I can confirm that coalition forces killed an estimated 11 terrorists during operations targeting special groups criminal networks early Thursday in Al-Kut,” US military spokesman Lieutenant Patrick Evans said.
The US military refers to Shiite extremists who have broken away from the main Mahdi Army militia of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr as “special groups.”
It says the groups wage acts of “terrorism” in Iraq with the financial and military support of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards units, though Tehran denies backing them.
Iraqi security officials said the raid took place in Kut’s western neighbourhood of Al-Jihad, which is near Camp Delta, an American military base that is a regular target of militia attacks.
The Iraq officials said the dead included two civilians.
The US military said the raid targeted a militant reportedly responsible for attacking its troops.
It said that during the raid the troops were attacked by “direct enemy fire” from assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. The soldiers returned fire and called in air support, leaving around 11 militants dead.
“We commend all those who honour Al-Sayyid Moqtada al-Sadr’s ceasefire pledge,” US military spokesman Major Winfield Danielson said in a separate statement giving details of the operation. “Significant progress has been made in the fight for a secure and stable Iraq, but dangerous criminal elements still exist.”
In late August, Sadr ordered a six-month freeze on the activities of the Mahdi Army militia, which had fought against US forces since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. The US military accuses “rogue” elements of breaking away from the militia to form special groups that continue attacking its troops despite Sadr’s call.
On Thursday the American military also said it had captured two Al-Qaeda militants suspected of involvement in the May kidnapping of three US soldiers.
Troops captured the pair in the city of Ramadi in the western Sunni province of Anbar on Monday and Tuesday after intelligence reports linked them to the abduction of the soldiers following an ambush, a military statement said.
The three-Private Byron Fouty, Specialist Alex Jiminez and Private First Class Joseph Anzack-were seized on May 12 south of Baghdad near the town of Mahmudiyah.
An Al-Qaeda front group later claimed in a video that it had killed them. Anzack’s body was found floating in the Euphrates River a few days later, but American forces are still searching the other two.
The three were snatched during an insurgent ambush on a US unit manning an observation post near Mahmudiyah. Four US soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were killed in the attack.
One of the two suspects captured this week was believed to have used his home to hide the abducted soldiers, the statement said.

More than 130 feared dead after Indonesian rains

TAWANGMANGU (AFP) - Indonesian rescuers hunted Thursday for victims of landslides and floods on Java island that have left more than 130 people feared dead and tens of thousands displaced, officials said.
Landslides hit two districts in Central Java in the early hours of Wednesday morning, engulfing entire homes and blocking roads, while floods in East Java swept away a bridge, leaving an estimated 50 missing.
Health ministry official Rustam Pakaya said at least 28,000 people were displaced in Central Java, where figures were still being compiled, while the Red Cross said 45,000 people fled their homes in East Java.
Five tonnes of instant meals and biscuits, 10 tonnes of baby food and several boats were dispatched to the disaster zones from Jakarta, he said.
In Central Java, hundreds of troops, police, local officials and residents used their hands, hoes and shovels to search for bodies, with the arrival of earth-moving equipment delayed by slides and poor roads.
In worst-hit Karanganyar district, the head of the local disaster management centre Heru Aji Pratomo said 12 bodies were plucked from the muddy wreckage, bringing the number of bodies recovered to 48.
Most of the bodies were recovered from mud as deep as three metres (10 feet) using heavy machinery, he told ElShinta radio.
He said another 20 bodies were believed missing, adding that due to heavy rains the search had been halted and would not resume again until Friday.
A witness in Karanganyar said that the landslide had felt like an earthquake.
“Suddenly I felt my house shaking, and I thought it was an earthquake. When I got outside, I saw that the houses next to mine were already covered by earth,” resident Siswo told AFP.
Twelve of his neighbours’ homes were hit, he added.
In an adjacent district, the head of the disaster management centre Sri Mubadi told AFP that two more bodies were recovered, bringing the toll to six, with 11 missing, he said.
Only manual equipment was also being used here, he added.
In East Java, operational unit chief of Madiun district police Alit Suyasa said that at least 100 rescuers were deployed to search for the estimated 50 people believed to have been on a bridge swept away by a swollen river.
“We found today three motorcycles stuck not far from the bridge,” he said, adding that no bodies were recovered.
“Floodwaters are still high and the current is very strong.”
The search was abandoned when heavy rains again began falling, he told AFP.
Meanwhile firebrand Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir toured a village in Karanganyar and said people had probably brought the disaster on themselves.
“This was likely caused by immoral acts going on here,” 69-year-old Bashir told reporters during his 10-minute visit, without elaborating.
“This could be a lesson to be learned,” he admonished.
Bashir served more than two years for his role in a “sinister conspiracy” that led to the 2002 Bali bombings, which left 202 people dead. The Supreme Court last December overturned his conviction.
Indonesia has been repeatedly afflicted by deadly floods and landslides in recent years, with activists warning that logging and a failure to reforest denuded land in the world’s fourth-most populous country are often to blame.
But in Central Java, officials insisted deforestation was not to blame.
“The hills are unstable and vulnerable to landslides anyway,” said district disaster management centre head Mubadi.