Slashdot Mirror
Pakastani Politician Detained By US Customs Over Opposition To Drone Strikes
First time accepted submitter Serious Callers Only writes "According to reports, Imran Khan was detained yesterday by US officials for questioning on his views on United States drone strikes in Pakistan. Glenn Greenwald writing for the guardian: 'On Saturday, Khan boarded a flight from Canada to New York in order to appear at a fundraising lunch and other events. But before the flight could take off, U.S. immigration officials removed him from the plane and detained him for two hours, causing him to miss the flight. On Twitter, Khan reported that he was "interrogated on [his] views on drones" and then added: "My stance is known. Drone attacks must stop." He then defiantly noted: "Missed flight and sad to miss the Fundraising lunch in NY but nothing will change my stance."'"
If Khan really wants this solved, then he should do the right thing and push his gov's intel world to stop supporting them.
Actually, he does. He is against both the Taliban and the ISI (which is the group, remember, that convinced the Reagan administration to train Osama Bin Ladin).
I am not by any means saying that he is perfect, but as far as I can tell, he is saying more of the right things than any other major Pakistani politician.
i wonder how the US would react if Pakistan started arresting random visiting politicians & diplomats on the grounds that, well, you know...
If you're referring to Islamic Fundamentalists
Some would argue that "Islamic Fundamentalists" is just a fancy term for normal, mainstream Muslims who aren't of the ultraliberal (from the POV of Middle Eastern folks) branch of Islam (and who are often called "apostates", not "liberals", in the same area).
And they'd be correct. Even the "ultraliberal" Muslims in the west often end up being caught funding terrorists.
Nice how /. neglects that the man is a pro-taliban activist.
Hell being a pro-taliban Pakistani official, he may have been one of the people responsible for hiding bin Ladin in Pakistan and funneling weapons to them.
Also who knows what kinds of checks officials were running behind his back, this may have been a delaying tactic to find out what he was up to and the questioning about drone strikes a complete ruse.
All I see here among /.ers is wild speculation coming from one, incomplete report and hatred of the TSA.
How many Islamist do you know? That you have actually talked to? Most people are just people. 23% of the world's population are Islamist.
I don't see any evidence that they detained him as punishment for "opposing" U.S. policy. They detained him because he made a public threat against U.S. aircraft.
This guy is stirring popular anger in Pakistan by publicly stating that if elected he will order the Pakistani armed forces to shoot down U.S. drones. It's in TFA. By making that statement he is expressing an explicit determination to shoot down U.S. military aircraft. While he's not saying he wants to shoot U.S. pilots, as a general rule, shooting at U.S. property is a crime. If you fire a bullet at a federal building but it doesn't hit anyone, you're still going to jail. If you threaten to blow up a federal building expressly when no one's in it, you're still going to jail.
With that in mind, they had a guy who expressed intent to shoot down U.S. aircraft getting on a plane to the U.S. Of course they're going to pull him and get an assessment of whether letting him into U.S. airspace poses a threat. Threat assessment is their job, not censorship. If he had started killing passengers with a ball-point pen mid-flight in retaliation for the drone strikes, there would be this outrage about how "the Obama administration isn't protecting Americans." In the end they were satisfied and said he's welcome in the U.S.
We don't know, and will never know, what was said when they interrogated him. They probably did ask him about his comments. But as a politician who is running on a platform of violent anti-American sentiment, who was on his way to a fundraiser in New York (have you stopped to consider whether its appropriate for a candidate for Prime Minister to attend fundraisers in the "evil" country he is railing against?), it's in his interest to say, "see? The Americans are trying to stop me! They're validating all our fears about them. Elect me because I know first hand what it means to be stepped on by the Americans." It's political BS as usual, and you drank the Kool-Aid.