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Editorials
Saturday, April 8, 2000Pakistan’s ex-premier
gets life sentenceTHE former prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, who was ousted in a military coup last October, was an improbable suspect as an airline hijacker, but he has been convicted of hijacking nonetheless, as well as terrorism; he was acquitted of attempted murder and kidnapping. From Sharif's viewpoint, the good news is that he was sentenced to life imprisonment rather than death.The issue: Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been convicted of hijacking and terrorism and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Considering that Sharif was never aboard the plane he was found guilty of hijacking, the conviction was bizarre. What the prime minister actually did was to issue orders telling the Karachi airport's ground control center to refuse permission for landing to the airliner. According to the pilot, the plane was low on fuel and the lives of all 198 people on board were endangered.
This was no ordinary flight. Among the passengers was Gen. Pervez Musharraf, whom the prime minister had fired as army chief of staff just hours earlier.
The reason Sharif wanted to prevent the plane from landing was that a coup was under way. But the plane did land, with seven minutes' worth of fuel remaining, after the army gained control. Once on the ground, Musharraf took over the government and arrested Sharif.
Thus Sharif had a strong motive to keep the plane from landing. It wasn't clear that he knew the plane was low on fuel when he issued his order -- which he subsequently rescinded.
The case smacked of retribution against a helpless opponent. It was heard in Pakistan's anti-terrorism court, a venue for heinous crimes and speedy trials that had been instituted by Sharif himself.
The judge said the verdict fell within the confines of Pakistan's penal code, but that could only be so through stretching the definition of hijacking beyond recognition.
An anti-Sharif official said it was the first time that a national leader had decided to become the country's chief air traffic controller as well. But this amounted to neither hijacking nor terrorism.
President Clinton, on his recent brief stopover in Pakistan, asked Musharraf to spare Sharif's life, but it didn't appear that the request affected the sentence. However, a death sentence could have further strained relations with Washington, which were badly damaged by last summer's fighting in Kashmir and the coup that deposed Sharif.
Disclosing information
from Linda Tripp’s fileTO some, Linda Tripp is the wicked witch of the Monica Lewinsky affair, the woman who nearly brought down President Clinton by disclosing his sordid affair with a White House intern through the betrayal of confidences. Tripp now has her own troubles, facing charges under Maryland law of illegal wiretapping for secretly recording her phone conversations with Lewinsky.
Whether or not Tripp broke the law, she violated Lewinsky's privacy by taping those conversations without her knowledge or consent. But Tripp herself was a victim of invasion of privacy.
The chief Pentagon spokesman, Kenneth Bacon, has admitted instructing his former deputy, Clifford Bernath, to release information from Tripp's personnel file -- she is an employee of the Defense Department -- to a reporter for The New Yorker magazine. Bacon has said he regretted allowing the disclosure without first talking to attorneys or determining whether it violated the federal Privacy Act.
The New Yorker reported that Tripp had been arrested on suspicion of theft as a teen-ager but did not reveal that information on her Pentagon security clearance form. Tripp later said items were placed in her purse as a prank. She pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of loitering.
Tripp claimed that the officials released the information in retaliation for her cooperation with independent counsel Kenneth Starr. She filed a lawsuit for invasion of privacy last fall against the Pentagon and the White House.
The Pentagon's inspector general investigated the case and forwarded the findings to the Department of Justice in the summer of 1998. Only last week, the Justice Department notified the inspector general that it had decided not to prosecute the two Pentagon officials.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said the criminal division's public integrity section found there was insufficient evidence to prove that Bacon and Bernath willfully intended to violate the Privacy Act. Was the same standard applied to Tripp when she was prosecuted in Maryland for wiretapping?
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., charged that the Clinton administration was engaged in a cover-up and scolded the Justice Department for taking 20 months to respond.
The disclosure of Tripp's youthful caper was irrelevant to her involvement in the Lewinsky affair and might well have been intended as a crude attempt to discredit her.
Although this may not be a cover-up, it is certainly ironic that government officials can get away with releasing information from a private personnel file while the subject of that file is being prosecuted for violation of another person's privacy.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
