Month: December 2017

(Nasir Iqbal | Dawn) ISLAMABAD: Against the backdrop of a 20-day-long Faizabad sit-in, the Supreme Court has ruled that no one could be allowed to use “filthy-abusive language” for the sake of politics in the guise of an Islamic cause. “Freedom of speech and expression as well as freedom of the press is enshrined as a fundamental right (Article 19 of the Constitution), but the same provision curtails it when it is used to undermine ‘the glory of Islam or the integrity, security or defence of Pakistan… or morality, or…

(Manzoor Ali | Dawn) PESHAWAR: Police investigators probing the Friday attack on Peshawar’s Agriculture Training Institute (ATI) suspect that the planners of the attack apparently tricked the suicide bombers into believing that the facility was an intelligence agency’s office, it emerged on Saturday. Nine people, including eight students, were killed and 28 others injured when three terrorists stormed the provincial agriculture department-run training institute on Friday morning. All the three terrorists were also killed in a two-hour-long operation. A senior police official told Dawn that the planners had deliberately misled…

(Ali Akbar | Hassan Farhan | Dawn) At least nine suspects were arrested during a pre-dawn search operation carried out by law-enforcement agencies on the outskirts of Peshawar on Saturday as police launched an investigation into yesterday’s terror attack on the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI). Three terrorists dressed in burqas stormed the ATI hostel situated near Peshawar’s University Road, killing nine people and injuring 37 others. The attack was claimed by the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. Both police and military officials said the attackers had been coordinating with handlers based in Afghanistan. The ATI today…

(Umar Farooq/Dawn) Dr Ashraf Asif Jalali-led faction of Tehreek-i-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLY), which had been holding a sit-in outside the Punjab Assembly for the past week, concluded their protest around midnight on Friday, December 1 after the government convinced them to withdraw their main demand — the resignation of Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah from his post. The Lahore sit-in had been launched by the Jalali-led faction of the political party following reports of a police operation against the participants of the Faizabad sit-in on the morning of November 25th. The…