Help the fight on terrorism... kill a foreigner.

[Snibble]

Link: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=18&u=/ap/20040502/ap_on_re_as/pakistan_macedonia

By ASIF SHAHZAD, Associated Press Writer

LAHORE, Pakistan - Relatives said Sunday they will seek legal damages after Macedonia admitted that its police framed and executed six Pakistani immigrants to boost the Balkan country's profile in the U.S.-led effort against terrorism.

The men, aged between 22 and 29, were gunned down in March 2002 outside Skopje, Macedonia's capital. They had been accused of ambushing a police patrol and plotting attacks on foreign embassies in Macedonia.

Ansar Burney, a lawyer and head of the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust International, a civil rights group which has campaigned on behalf of the victims' families, said he was preparing to file a lawsuit in the International Court of Justice in The Hague (news - web sites), Netherlands.

"We will sue the government for $12 million" — $2 million per family, he told The Associated Press by e-mail from London, where he is based.

Macedonian police said seven Pakistanis were killed, but Burney said one of the victims was Indian. He said the police had killed them in a fake encounter outside the U.S. Embassy in Skopje and made out that they were terrorists, trained in Pakistani camps and planning to strike American and European interests.

"They were just economic migrants passing through Macedonia illegally to reach some European country to earn money for their poor families," Burney said.

Macedonian police have accused the country's former interior minister, Ljube Boskovski, of ordering the executions and also implicated three top associates, as well as a businessman and two police commandos.

The police charges are a first step in a legal process likely to lead to an official indictment and a trial. If found guilty, they could face life in prison.

Pakistan's government praised Macedonia for revealing the "diabolical plot" and starting legal action.

"This crime is even more shocking and heinous because these murders were pre-planned and were committed to spruce up Macedonia's image as an ally in the war against terrorism," Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said in a statement.

He added that Pakistan's ambassador was in touch with authorities in Skopje, and that the government would "make all efforts to seek full justice for these innocent victims." He did not elaborate.

The mother of one of six dead Pakistanis, Umar Farooq, said Sunday that her son had left the family's village home in eastern Pakistan for Europe to seek work. Razia Bibi said the 22-year old — the eldest of her six children — had nothing to do with terrorism and his only fault was to seek "a better future."

"I sold my jewelry, borrowed money from relatives and added them to my life savings to get enough money to send my son somewhere abroad," she told AP by telephone from Bherkey Kalan village in Gujrat district, some 100 miles north of the city of Lahore.

"I will live with this pain for rest of my life ... and what is left there in my life? I am dead since my son died," said Bibi, 45, sobbing as she spoke.

Her brother-in-law, Arif Hussain, confirmed that their family and relatives of the other five victims who live in nearby villages would seek compensation. He said they would follow suggestions from the government or the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust, which helped repatriate the victims' bodies in September 2002.

"We will definitely like to take some legal action," Hussain said.

Burney named the other five Pakistani victims as Syed Bilal Husain Shah, Mohammed Asif Javed, Khalid Iqbal, Ejaz Ahmad Qureshi and Muhammad Riaz. He did not know the name of the Indian.

He appealed to European countries and the United States "to see what is happening with innocent people in the name of the war against terrorism."

Since breaking away from Yugoslavia in 1991, Macedonia has been eager to win American political and economic support. It has supported the U.S.-led campaign against al-Qaida and has sent troops to Iraq (news - web sites).

Pakistan is also a key American ally, helping hunt down al-Qaida suspects along the border with Afghanistan (news - web sites).

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Thats really low of Macedonia.... killing foreigners just to make them look as though they did something for the war on terrorism.