Baitullah Mehsud Flees to Afghanistan

This is either very encouraging news or very good government agitprop, the Daily Times reports that Baitullah Mehsud has fled to Afghanistan, and is in cohorts with “Indian Agents” and Hekmatyar. From the Daily Times:

ISLAMABAD: Intelligence agencies have informed the Interior Ministry that Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Taliban in Waziristan, fled to Afghanistan on Friday. Sources told Daily Times on Tuesday that the intelligence reports mentioned that Mehsud had several meetings with “Indian spies” and former Afghan premier Gulbadin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan this week. The reports said that Hekmatyar had met Mehsud at an undisclosed location, while Indian intelligence officials met him at Mazar-e-Sharif. The sources said that the intelligence agencies could not get the details of the meetings and Mehsud’s close aides in Waziristan were unaware of his whereabouts. Mehsud and his group are accused of involvement in several suicide attacks in Pakistan.

Mad Max Gunned Down

No, not this Mad Max

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Not this one either

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It was this Mad Max:

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KIEV: A Russian businessman with suspected links to organised crime known as “Mad Max” was shot dead outside a court in Kiev where he had just been sentenced for extortion, police said.
Maskim Kurochkin, who had been in jail in the Ukraine since November 2006, was killed in the internal courtyard of the courthouse as he was getting into a police van, police spokesman Volodymyr Polichchuk told said.

He died soon after from his wounds, the spokesman said, adding that one of the three police officers who was escorting the prisoner had been hit by the same bullet and had to be hospitalised.

“A policeman was wounded. Kurochkin is dead,” a judge at the court, Anatoli Iaselski, was quoted as saying by online daily Ukrayinska Pravda.

The fatal shot was said to have been fired by a professional and came from a nearby nine-floor building, the online daily Korrespondent said.

More from Reuters

Kidnapped Sailor Update

The kidnapping of the sailors was a strike against the British, who had just turned another province over to local Iraqi control. It is also a direct affront to the nation of Iraq, whose territorial waters the sailors were captured in.

 As we’ve now gone beyond the three day turnaround of the previous incident, expect things to steeply and continuously escalate over the kidnapped British sailors, who were on a routine ship inspection in rubber dinghys called “RIBs” when they were captured by Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen in gunboats. This happened four days ago on Friday, shortly after several saber-rattling speeches by Iranian military leaders that kicked off the Iranian Naval war games Thursday.

Continue reading “Kidnapped Sailor Update”