Former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami on Friday condemned the Sept. 11 attacks in the US as an atrocity and said suicide bombers did Islam an injustice and would not go to heaven.
Three days before the fifth anniversary of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, the Shiite cleric urged Muslims to work against "Islamaphobia," which he said had grown since Islamic militants flew hijacked aircraft into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
Two crimes were committed on Sept. 11 -- civilians were killed and it was done in the name of Islam, Khatami told the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a human rights group.
"We Muslims should condemn these atrocities even more strongly," he said.
"[A] terrorist, which means killing of civilians, is a human being that lacks morality ... [and] will not go to heaven" and those who commit terrorist acts in the name of Islam "are lying," he said.
Nearing the end of a five-city US visit in which he largely stressed themes of dialogue and co-existence, Khatami continued to stir controversy.
A US-based pro-Israel group, the Israel Project, complained in a press release that the president was "working to whitewash Iran's record of nuclear developments, support for terror and human rights violations."
In a Time magazine interview, Khatami said he regretted the 1979 US hostage crisis and acknowledged the Holocaust of 6 million Jews as "historical fact."
"I believe the Holocaust is the crime of Nazism," Khatami told Time magazine.
"But it is possible that the Holocaust, which is an absolute fact, a historical fact, would be misused. The Holocaust should not be, in any way, an excuse for the suppression of Palestinian rights," he told the New York-based newsweekly.
Ahmadinejad has repeatedly denied publicly the Holocaust, as recently as last month.
However, Khatami said he doubted his successor had malicious intentions.
"I personally believe that he really didn't deny the existence of the Holocaust," he said.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
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