Excuses, excuses

During the last few weeks, it has been amazing to read classic excuses from some high profile responsible persons who are attempting to hide their failures or those of their organizations. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) has told the Indian Supreme Court that parliamentarian Ahsan Jaafri could have fired on the rioters during the siege of the Gulberg Society in the 2002 Gujarat riots.
Jaafri’s action might have instigated the rioters to set the entire colony on fire, wherein 69 persons including Jaafri were burned to death. Meanwhile, the head of the Pakistan army’s paramilitary force Frontier Core (FC) Major Gen. Ubaid Khan told the Supreme Court that his force has nothing to do with “missing persons” and that extremists were involved in kidnapping people while using FC uniforms and vehicles.
During the hearing a video clip obtained from a CCTV camera was also played showing FC soldiers stopping three persons at a hotel entrance and then taking them away in an FC vehicle. Khan rejected the footage saying it did not prove that his men were involved in the kidnapping of these people. At the same time, former Liberian president Charles Taylor has accused the prosecution of paying and threatening witnesses to accuse him in the ongoing war crimes trial in Geneva.
Taylor expressed “deepest sympathy” for victims in Sierra Leone but insisted on his innocence. He told the court that he is the father of many children, and that he has many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and that therefore the court should consider his age when deciding on a verdict.These high profile excuses may provide some historians with an incentive to “correct” the record of many infamous massacres, such as My Lai, Sabra and Shatila, Srebrenica, Cave of the Patriarchs, 9/11, Bhagalpur - and the list goes on.
 Masood Khan, Jubail