Busted Pak firm ‘sold 1,198 fake degrees to Saudis’

June 25, 2015

Riyadh, Jun 25: A Pakistani firm under investigation for fraud allegedly sold 1,198 fake degrees to Saudis between 2011 and 2015, a local publication reported on Wednesday.

Pakistani authorities have already arrested the owner of Axact Company, Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh, in Karachi for allegedly selling thousands of fake degrees to customers worldwide during this period.

Saudis received 1,198 fake degrees from nonexistent universities, for between SR50,000 and SR100,000, the report stated. Axact allegedly forged the certificates, with several consulates and government offices in certain countries around the world attesting these documents.

Jasim Al-Khaldi, Saudi chargé de a’ffairs in Islamabad, said the embassy and cultural mission were following up on the investigations. He said the Saudi government wants to know the names of citizens who obtained degrees from the company, and those of Pakistanis working in the Kingdom using these bogus qualifications.

Khayyam Akbar, Pakistani chargé de a’ffairs in the Kingdom, said his government would provide the Saudi government with the names of its citizens with fake degrees as soon as investigations are completed.

The multimillion-dollar fake degree scandal was first scooped by Arab News in 2009. Pakistan’s top investigative agencies launched a probe after the New York Times ran a report in May this year detailing what Arab News had already revealed.

Arab News had followed up on a report that a certain Rochville University had awarded a master’s in business administration to a bulldog named Chester.

The application had been made by the dog’s owner, Vicky Phillips, founder of GetEducated.com, in an attempt to expose the fake university. Rochville’s physical location was a mystery and Arab News learned from a courier company official in Dubai that the degree originated from Axact’s office in Karachi.

When the story was published in Arab News, it received a legal threat from Axact’s lawyers, and the article had to be removed from the Internet. There was, however, no retraction in the print edition and Arab News stood by the story.

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UN condemns Israeli regime’s ‘organized torture’ against Palestinians

News Network

November 30,2025

The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) has condemned the Israeli regime for enforcing a policy of “organized torture” against Palestinians.

In a report published on Friday, CAT stated that the occupying regime enforces a deliberate policy of “organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” against Palestinian abductees, particularly since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

The committee expressed “deep concern over repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, water-boarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence” inflicted on Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners were degraded by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on,” systematically denied medical care, and subjected to excessive restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation,” the report added.

CAT also condemned the routine application of “unlawful combatants law” to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

More than 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian and international human rights groups, with 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention,” meaning they are imprisoned without trial for indefinite periods.

The report highlighted the “high proportion of children who are currently detained without charge or on remand,” noting that while Israel sets the age of criminal responsibility at 12, even younger children have been abducted.

Children designated as security prisoners face severe restrictions on family contact, may be subjected to solitary confinement, and are denied access to education, in clear violation of international law.

The committee further suggested that Israel’s policies across the Occupied Territories constitute collective torture against the Palestinian population.

“A range of policies adopted by Israel in the course of its continued unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading living conditions for the Palestinian population,” the report said.

On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the systematic killing and torture of Palestinian abductees in Israeli prisons, urging international action to halt these abuses.

Citing human rights data, Hamas stated that 94 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since the start of Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This reflects an organized criminal approach that has turned these prisons into direct killing grounds to eliminate our people,” the resistance movement said.

Hamas called on the international community, the UN, and human rights organizations to immediately pressure Israel to end crimes against prisoners and uphold their rights as guaranteed by all international conventions and norms.

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