CIA operated drones from two Pakistan air force bases: Experts

Washington : The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is alleged to have operated Predator drones out of two bases in Pakistan.
According to the New York Times and The Guardian newspapers, the CIA had in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of al-Qaida.
Current and former government officials have reportedly confirmed that remotedly drones were moved out of a remote base in Shamsi and an air base in Jalalabad with the help of Blackwater.
From a secret division at its North Carolina headquarters, Blackwater assumed the role of Washingtons most important counter-terrorism program.
The divisions operations were carried out at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the companys contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by CIA employees.
They also provide security at the covert bases, the officials said.
The role of the company in the Predator program highlights the degree to which the C.I.A. now depends on outside contractors to perform some of the agencys most important assignments.
A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article.
CIA officials, however, said that the spy agency did not dispatch Blackwater executives with a license to kill. Instead, it ordered the contractors to begin collecting information on the whereabouts of Al Qaedas leaders, carry out surveillance and train for possible missions.
The actual pulling of a trigger in some ways is the easiest part, and the part that requires the least expertise, said one government official familiar with the canceled CIA program.
Its everything that leads up to it thats the meat of the issue, he added.
Any operation to capture or kill militants would have had to have been approved by the C.I.A. director and presented to the White House before it was carried out, the officials said.
The agencys current director, Leon E. Panetta, canceled the program and notified Congress of its existence in an emergency meeting in June.
The extent of Blackwaters business dealings with the C.I.A. has largely been hidden, but its public contract with the State Department to provide private security to American diplomats in Iraq has generated intense scrutiny and controversy.
The company lost the job in Iraq this year, after Blackwater guards were involved in shootings in 2007 that left 17 Iraqis dead. It still has other, less prominent State Department work.

More unmarked graves discovered in held Kashmir

SRINAGAR: A rights group has discovered several unmarked graves containing about 1,500 unidentified bodies in held Kashmir valley.
Members of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) said that at least eight of the graves had more than one body likely of the innocent people killed by Indian paramilitary forces.
"We've found that at least eight are mass graves as they contain more than one body," the APDP’s lawyer, Pervez Imroz told media men here.
"We have found more graves of about 1,500 people buried as unidentified persons in three remote districts during our ongoing survey," Pervez Imroz, said.
The latest report from the districts of Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipore is part of the APDP's ongoing survey of the northern parts of the held Kashmir . Last year, in a report titled, "Facts Under Ground", the APDP had reported discovery of unmarked graves of about 1,000 people near Uri in Baramulla district.
After that report, the Amnesty International had called for an independent probe into the unnamed graves.

Ramadan starts Saturday for most Arabs

DUBAI- Saudi Arabia,the birthplace of Islam, will start the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan on Saturday along with most other GCC and Arab countries.
Senior religious councils in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Algeria and Iraq said the moon's crescent was not sighted after nightfall on Thursday, and so Friday would be the 30th day of Shaaban, the month preceding Ramadan.
The start of the ninth and holiest month of the Muslim calendar is traditionally determined by the sighting of the new moon, often dividing rival Islamic countries and sects over the exact date. More than one billion Muslims worldwide fast from dawn to dusk during the holy month.
Because it follows the lunar cycle, Ramadan comes 11 days earlier every year on the Gregorian calendar, bringing the fasting month this year in the summer.