MUMBAI // Under pressure from India to bring the perpetrators of last year's Mumbai attack to justice, Pakistani officials are expected to announce charges against seven suspects this week, Rehman Malik, Pakistan's interior minister, said on Saturday.
But despite this development, relations between the nuclear rivals remain sour as Pakistan drags its feet in apprehending Hafiz Saeed, the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai attack, demanding that India furnish more evidence against him.
Last Thursday, the Pakistani government filed two charges against Mr Saeed, but neither implicates him in the Mumbai attack. Even after they were filed - under Pakistan's domestic antiterror act for anti-state sermons and collecting donations for terrorist activities against the state - he has not been arrested.
A K Dogar, Mr Saeed's lawyer, calls the charges against his client "ridiculous", adding that they will "not stand in court". Mr Dogar expects the case to fall apart, he said by telephone from Islamabad, fuelling speculation that Mr Saeed will be released even if he is arrested, as he was on several previous occasions.
In December 2008, Pakistani authorities banned his organisation, Jamaat-Ud-Dawa, a charity believed to be a front for Lashkar-i-Taiba (LiT), the militant group India accuses of masterminding the Mumbai attack, and Mr Saeed was put under house arrest. However, in June, a Pakistani court released him for lack of evidence.
SM Krishna, India's external affairs minister, said that India will only be satisfied if he is charged and tried for his alleged role in the attack, saying that enough evidence was supplied against Mr Saeed to warrant his arrest and trial.
In August, the Indian government handed over a seven-page dossier to Pakistan, its fourth since last year's Mumbai terrorist attack, stepping up pressure on its nuclear rival to act tough against the perpetrators of the attack, who it claims are Pakistani nationals.
With the latest dossier, P Chidambaram, the Indian home minister, said the country had furnished copious evidence to Pakistan to prosecute Mr Saeed as the commander of the LiT.
But Mr Malik on Saturday stressed that it cannot charge him in the Mumbai attack because the evidence that India furnished against him in its dossier was "not enough". Statements by the sole surviving gunman from last November's attack, Ajmal Kasab, implicating Mr Saeed in an Indian court, are not admissible in Pakistani courts since he cannot be cross-examined, Mr Malik said.
"Considerable progress has been made in the 26/11 probe," he said at a press conference in Islamabad. "But we need more forensic details from India."
Just before the conference, his office handed over a dossier to the Indian Embassy in Pakistan, containing an update on the investigations, along with a demand for "additional evidence".
It is not clear how India will officially respond to the dossier, though it has stressed it wants speedy justice in the case.
"India certainly would request upon Pakistan to bring to justice the perpetrators of attacks on Mumbai," said Mr Krishna.
The foreign secretaries of both countries are expected to meet in New York next week, on the sidelines of the United Nations general assembly, but analysts are sceptical whether any fruitful dialogue will ensue.
After months of heightened tensions, India and Pakistan broke ground recently when both countries mutually decided to restart the stalled composite dialogue process.
In a joint statement issued on July 17 by Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister, and his Pakistani counterpart, Yusuf Raza Gilani, in Sharm El Sheikh, both sides vowed to insulate the dialogue process from terrorism. In the past after a terrorism attack, the countries stopped talking.
India and Pakistan have sat through four rounds of the composite dialogue, achieving modest gains on trade agreements and limited confidence-building measures. The fifth round was underway when the Mumbai attacks occurred. As the two countries have endured three wars, numerous skirmishes along the border and decades of cold war, optimistic observers thought this new bonhomie would encourage both of them to peacefully negotiate all major outstanding disputes, including Kashmir. But the dialogue process has barely inched forward since the Sharm El Sheikh meeting, primarily because of the slow progress in the Mumbai attacks case.
Mr Gilani, at an iftar party he hosted for Kashmiri leaders in Islamabad last week, urged India to not let the dialogue process stall. He called Kashmir "Pakistan's jugular vein", and reiterated that the Kashmir dispute is the cornerstone of Pakistan's foreign policy.
"We want to resolve the Kashmir dispute peacefully and invite India for negotiations, a gesture that it has continued to ignore," Mr Gilani said in his address at the Prime Minister's House.
Expressing serious doubts about the seriousness of the latest charges filed against Mr Saeed, MK Narayanan, India's national security adviser, said that he lives with "daily dread" of another Mumbai-style attack on Indian soil.
"We get so many pieces of intelligence which pass across our table, many you can sort of weed out, but quite a few, which if [we are] not able to nip it in bud can turn dangerous," he said in an interview to CNN IBN, an Indian news channel.
"After 9/11, Pakistan was forced by the US to disown the Taliban, cooperate in tackling Al Qa'eda, and curb the activities of jihadis in Kashmir," Swaminathan Aiyar, a political observer wrote in a column in the Times of India, a national daily. "If the US troops exit, Pakistan may once again encourage jihadis to stir up trouble in India, and not just in Kashmir. The future bristles with dangers."
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CDU: "Now is the time to control the German borders and enforce strict border rejections"
SPD: "Border closures and blanket rejections at internal borders contradict the spirit of a common area of freedom"
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BULKWHIZ PROFILE
Date started: February 2017
Founders: Amira Rashad (CEO), Yusuf Saber (CTO), Mahmoud Sayedahmed (adviser), Reda Bouraoui (adviser)
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: E-commerce
Size: 50 employees
Funding: approximately $6m
Investors: Beco Capital, Enabling Future and Wain in the UAE; China's MSA Capital; 500 Startups; Faith Capital and Savour Ventures in Kuwait
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
What is dialysis?
Dialysis is a way of cleaning your blood when your kidneys fail and can no longer do the job.
It gets rid of your body's wastes, extra salt and water, and helps to control your blood pressure. The main cause of kidney failure is diabetes and hypertension.
There are two kinds of dialysis — haemodialysis and peritoneal.
In haemodialysis, blood is pumped out of your body to an artificial kidney machine that filter your blood and returns it to your body by tubes.
In peritoneal dialysis, the inside lining of your own belly acts as a natural filter. Wastes are taken out by means of a cleansing fluid which is washed in and out of your belly in cycles.
It isn’t an option for everyone but if eligible, can be done at home by the patient or caregiver. This, as opposed to home haemodialysis, is covered by insurance in the UAE.
What is type-1 diabetes
Type 1 diabetes is a genetic and unavoidable condition, rather than the lifestyle-related type 2 diabetes.
It occurs mostly in people under 40 and a result of the pancreas failing to produce enough insulin to regulate blood sugars.
Too much or too little blood sugar can result in an attack where sufferers lose consciousness in serious cases.
Being overweight or obese increases the chances of developing the more common type 2 diabetes.
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Multitasking pays off for money goals
Tackling money goals one at a time cost financial literacy expert Barbara O'Neill at least $1 million.
That's how much Ms O'Neill, a distinguished professor at Rutgers University in the US, figures she lost by starting saving for retirement only after she had created an emergency fund, bought a car with cash and purchased a home.
"I tell students that eventually, 30 years later, I hit the million-dollar mark, but I could've had $2 million," Ms O'Neill says.
Too often, financial experts say, people want to attack their money goals one at a time: "As soon as I pay off my credit card debt, then I'll start saving for a home," or, "As soon as I pay off my student loan debt, then I'll start saving for retirement"."
People do not realise how costly the words "as soon as" can be. Paying off debt is a worthy goal, but it should not come at the expense of other goals, particularly saving for retirement. The sooner money is contributed, the longer it can benefit from compounded returns. Compounded returns are when your investment gains earn their own gains, which can dramatically increase your balances over time.
"By putting off saving for the future, you are really inhibiting yourself from benefiting from that wonderful magic," says Kimberly Zimmerman Rand , an accredited financial counsellor and principal at Dragonfly Financial Solutions in Boston. "If you can start saving today ... you are going to have a lot more five years from now than if you decide to pay off debt for three years and start saving in year four."
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
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Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Our legal consultant
Name: Dr Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
