PAKISTAN SUSPENDS MILITARY PARADE AFTER DOZENS KILLED IN SUICIDE BOMB ATTACK

India agrees to call off daily ritual held at Wagah border crossing near Lahore after one of Pakistan’s worst terrorist attacks

By Jon Boone

A Pakistani ranger and an Indian border security force officer goose-step 

during the daily parade at the Wagah border. 

Photograph: Mohsin Raza / Reuters/Reuters

Pakistan has called off a military parade on the country’s land crossing with India after the deadly suicide bombing on Sunday that killed 55 people.

India agreed to a request to suspend the daily ritual held at the Wagah border crossing near Lahore to honour the people killed in one of the worst terrorist attacks in Pakistan for months.

In the elaborately choreographed flag-lowering ceremony, troops from both sides march around a special parade ground between the countries before the gates on the only land-crossing point on the recognised border separating Pakistan and India are slammed shut.

On Sunday, a suicide bomber targeted the huge crowds of people as they were leaving the venue. Police said the device used appeared to be a bomb belt studded with shrapnel, which injured more than 120 others.Among those killed were three members of the paramilitary Rangers, who are in charge of securing the area and had received intelligence tipoffs in recent days about a possible attack.

Officials said the security cordon and body searches set up to screen people entering the parade ground forced the bomber to detonate the device near the car park as people began leaving at the end of the ceremony.

Although Pakistan has frequently been hit by devastating terrorist attacks on markets and places of worship that have killed large numbers of civilians,violence had fallen sharply in 2014 in the wake of infighting within the Pakistani Taliban following the killing of its former leader Hakimullah Mehsud and the launch in June of a major army operation against militant safe havens in North Waziristan.

Sunday’s attack was also unusual for being inside Punjab, the rich, populous province that dominates Pakistan politically, rather than the north-western tribal belt.

Wagah is just 15 miles from Lahore, the home town of the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, which has not experienced an attack on such a scale for several years.

Three separate groups claimed responsibility for the attack, including Jamaat ul-Ahrar, one of the most formidable new groups to split away from the Pakistani Taliban this year.

In an emailed statement, the group’s spokesman promised further attacks. He said the Wagah bombing was to avenge the “killing of those innocent people who have been killed by Pakistan army, particularly of those who have been killed in North Waziristan”.

Officials said it was the first time the flag-lowering ceremony had been cancelled since Pakistan fought its third war with India in 1971. The boisterous display of nationalism continued even during the limited war fought in Kargil in 1999 over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

 @  The Guardian

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WOMAN IN IRAN SENT TO PRISON AFTER GOING TO SPORTS EVENT

[Ms. Ghavami arrived in Iran in February and began meeting with members of Tehran’s small and heavily monitored circle of activists. Inspired by the election of President Hassan Rouhani, she tested the limits of official tolerance for dissent in Iran. This spring she began protesting against a new rule barring women from attending men’s volleyball matches.]

By Thomas Erdbrink

Ghoncheh Ghavami faces new accusations, her lawyer said. Credit 

Uncredited/Free Ghoncheh Campaign, via Associated Press

TEHRAN — An Iranian-British woman who wasarrested in June when she tried to attend a men’s volleyball match in Iran has been sentenced to a year in prison, her lawyer said Sunday.

The lawyer, Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei, said that the sentence for the woman, Ghoncheh Ghavami, 25, had not been officially delivered to him, but that he was informed by a court official. The reasons for her sentence were not made public.

Mr. Alizadeh Tabatabaei, one of Iran’s most prominent lawyers, also said that new accusations had been raised against his client, but that she had not been notified of the nature of those accusations. “She will be retried,” he said in a phone interview.

Ms. Ghavami arrived in Iran in February and began meeting with members of Tehran’s small and heavily monitored circle of activists. Inspired by the election of President Hassan Rouhani, she tested the limits of official tolerance for dissent in Iran. This spring she began protesting against a new rule barring women from attending men’s volleyball matches.

She was arrested during a protest in front of a stadium during a match between Iran and Italy in June but was released after a few hours. A week later she was arrested again and sent to the Evin prison in Tehran. Her trial took place last month.

Iran’s judiciary spokesman, Gholam Hussein Mohseni-Ejei, has denied reports that Ms. Ghavami’s case is related to the volleyball protest, saying last month that her arrest “has nothing to do with sports.”

Human rights organizations have called for her release, as have British officials. “It’s an outrage that a young woman is being locked up simply for peacefully having her say about how women are discriminated against in Iran,” said Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK, according to The Associated Press.

The British Foreign Office said in a statement that it had “concerns about the grounds for this prosecution, due process during the trial and Miss Ghavami’s treatment whilst in custody.” Iranian authorities do not recognize dual citizenship and consider people like Ms. Ghavami to be Iranian citizens.

@ The New York Times