Obama honours Daniel Pearl, signs Press Act
US President Barack Obama on Monday said that the legacy of Daniel Pearl, the American journalists who was kidnapped, tortured and killed by militants in Pakistan in 2002, lives on. Mr Obama who signed the Freedom of Press Act in his Oval Office also praised family of Pearl for being outspoken and so courageous.
Christened after Daniel Pearl, the Freedom of Press Act requires the state department to now include in its annual Human Rights Reports a listing of countries where press freedoms are threatened and to identify the governments that participate in repression of journalists.
In his brief remarks, Mr Obama said thanks to “Pearl family, who has been so outspoken and so courageous in sending a clear message that, despite Daniel’s death, his vision of a well-informed citizenry that is able to make choices and hold governments accountable, that that legacy lives on.” Members of the Pearl family joined the President in the Oval Office.
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Ex-Iran PM killer to be deported
Paris : France’s interior minister signed an order on Monday paving the way for the possible release of a man convicted of assassinating former Iranian Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar.
A Paris court is set to rule on Tuesday on Ali Vakili Rad’s release from prison where he has been serving a life sentence since 1994 for the strangling and stabbing death of Bakhtiar. Interior minister Brice Hortefeux signed the expulsion order on Monday, a source in the ministry said. The order came just one day after Clotilde Reiss, a young French academic, who had battled charges of spying in Iran for more than 10 months, returned to France. French authorities have denied a link between the two cases. —AP
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