'The sky was his home': Bangladeshi pilot’s wife remembers the war hero and the man

Group Captain Saiful Azam wearing the Iraq medal "Nawt-Al-Shuja". (Supplied: family of Saiful Azam)
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Updated 17 June 2020
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'The sky was his home': Bangladeshi pilot’s wife remembers the war hero and the man

  • Saiful Azam, 80, died last week and was the only officer to serve in four countries: Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jordan and Iraq
  • Most famous for downing four Israeli planes during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, his wife recalls a devoted family man and loyal friend

DHAKA: The story of famed Bangladeshi war veteran Saiful Azam downing four Israeli fighter jets in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war is well known, but very few know what drove the ace fighter pilot to the acts that would win him gallantry awards from multiple nations and recognition as a hero around the world.
In a wide-ranging interview with Arab News on Wednesday, Azam’s wife Nishat Ara told the stories behind Azam’s heroic dogfights and fondly recalled a long life spent with a man whose first love was always flying but who was also a devoted husband, father, and above all, friend.




Group Captain Saiful Azam (third from left) in Jordan as instructor. (Supplied: family of Saiful Azam)

Azam died at the age of 80 in Dhaka last Sunday and was laid to rest at the Bangladesh Air Force cemetery, bringing to a close a distinguished life that would see him win three wars and serve in four countries – Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jordan and Iraq – the only fighter pilot to have done so.
Ara had grown up living a “cushioned life” in Bangladesh, she said, but three months into her arranged marriage to Azam, she moved to Jordan where her husband was stationed as a fighter pilot. It was the time of the Arab-Israeli War, a conflict in which Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem and more than two dozen Palestinian villages around it from Jordan, laying the foundations of a long-simmering dispute.




Photo of newly wedded couple Group Captain Saiful Azam and Nishat Ara. (Supplied: family of Saiful Azam)

“I was living in a trench at the Mafraq base in Jordan to escape the Israeli bombings,” Ara said. “One day, Azam came back to tell me that one of his closest friends, Major Feras, from the Jordanian Air Force, had died in the Israeli bombings. He was so upset.”
The next day, she recalled, Azam moved to an Iraqi air base and went on to down two Israeli jets.
“In 1967, as a Jordanian and Iraqi Air Force pilot, he [Azam] shot down four Israeli aircraft in sky warfare,” the Bangladesh Air Force said in a statement released after his death.




Group Captain Saiful Azam pictured at the Bangladesh Air Force Museum, Dhaka, Bangladesh on October 30, 2015. The fighter jet behind Azam is a F-86 Sabre, one of the aircrafts he had extensive training on. (Supplied: family of Saiful Azam)

The acts of valour that saw Azam set a world record and bag gallantry awards from Jordan and Iraq was really a tribute to his best friend, Ara said. A year after the war, when the couple had their first child, Azam named him Feras, “in the loving memory of his best friend.” The couple also went on to have two daughters, Anila and Anita.
Born in Bangladesh’s central district of Pabna in 1941, Azam spent a significant part of his childhood in the Indian city of Kolkata. He joined the Pakistan Air Force at the age of 19 and served it until 1971, when Bangladesh, which used to be part of Pakistan and was formerly known as East Pakistan, became an independent nation.
During his time in the Pakistani Air Force, Azam shot down an Indian jet during the 1965 war between India and Pakistan for which he was awarded Pakistan’s third-highest military award, the Sitara-e-Jurat, or Star of Courage.




Group Captain Saiful Azam pictured in uniform, with his medals, at the Bangladesh Air Force Museum, Dhaka, Bangladesh on October 30, 2015 in front of a Folland Gnat fighter jet, his first combat kill in Pakistan's 1965 war with India. (Supplied: family of Saiful Azam)

After 1971, Azam served the Bangladesh Air Force until his retirement in 1980, following which he was chairman of the Civil Aviation Authorities of Bangladesh and a member of parliament from 1991–96.
Around three years ago, Azam was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, his family said.
After his death on Sunday, tributes poured in from around the world, including a call from Jordon’s Prince Hassan bin Talal “to convey his condolences on behalf of all Jordanians.” The chief of the Pakistan Air Force chief, Mujahid Anwar Khan, paid glowing tributes to Azam in a statement. 
During his life, the United States had also conferred the Top Gun and The Living Eagle titles on Azam in 1960 and 2001, respectively.
“In the aviation world, he is an international hero who was recognized with high appreciation,” said Air Vice Marshal M. Mafidur Rahman, the current civil aviation chairman. “He is our national pride as a fighter in the sky.” 
Ara said there couldn’t be a more accurate description of her late husband.




Group captain Saiful Azam and his wife Nishat Ara with their three children in 1999. (Supplied: family of Saiful Azam)

“The sky was his home; he was the happiest when he was flying,” she said. But while the world knew him as an ace pilot, Ara said, much more would be revealed about the man in an upcoming biography.
“Azam was many things to many people, but through this book, the best part of his personality will shine through,” she said, “that he was always a friend first.”


Australia plans to recognize Palestinian state within days, Sydney Morning Herald reports

Updated 11 August 2025
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Australia plans to recognize Palestinian state within days, Sydney Morning Herald reports

  • France and Canada last month said it planned to recognize a Palestinian state
  • Britain has said it would follow suit unless Israel addresses the humanitarian crisis in Palestine and reaches a ceasefire

SYDNEY: Australia plans to recognize a Palestinian state as early as Monday following similar moves by France, Britain and Canada, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese could sign off on the move after a regular cabinet meeting on Monday, the SMH reported, citing unidentified sources.
Albanese’s office did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
France and Canada last month said it planned to recognize a Palestinian state, while Britain has said it would follow suit unless Israel addresses the humanitarian crisis in Palestine and reaches a ceasefire.
Israel has condemned decisions by countries to support a Palestinian state, saying it will reward Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza.
Netanyahu told reporters on Sunday that most Israeli citizens were against establishing a Palestinian state as they thought that would bring war and not peace, even as thousands of protesters flooded the streets of Tel Aviv, opposing his plan to escalate the nearly two-year war and seize Gaza City.
“To have European countries and Australia march into that rabbit hole just like that, fall right into it ... this is disappointing and I think it’s actually shameful but it’s not going to change our position,” Netanyahu said.
Albanese has been calling for a two-state solution, with his center-left government supporting Israel’s right to exist within secure borders and Palestinians’ right to their own state.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers last month said it was “a matter of when, not if, Australia recognizes a Palestinian state.”
 


The Russian past of Alaska, where Trump and Putin will meet

Updated 11 August 2025
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The Russian past of Alaska, where Trump and Putin will meet

  • “They’re our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska,” Palin said

WASHINGTON: Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will hold a high-stakes meeting about the Ukraine war on Friday in Alaska, which the United States bought from Russia more than 150 years ago.
Russian influence still endures in parts of the remote state on the northwest edge of the North American continent, which extends just a few miles from Russia.

When Danish explorer Vitus Bering first sailed through the narrow strait that separates Asia and the Americas in 1728, it was on an expedition for Tsarist Russia.
The discovery of what is now known as the Bering Strait revealed the existence of Alaska to the West — however Indigenous people had been living there for thousands of years.
Bering’s expedition kicked off a century of Russian seal hunting, with the first colony set up on the southern Kodiak island.
In 1799, Tsar Paul I established the Russian-American Company to take advantage of the lucrative fur trade, which often involved clashes with the Indigenous inhabitants.
However the hunters overexploited the seals and sea otters, whose populations collapsed, taking with them the settlers’ economy.
The Russian empire sold the territory to Washington for $7.2 million in 1867.
The purchase of an area more than twice the size of Texas was widely criticized in the US at the time, even dubbed “Seward’s folly” after the deal’s mastermind, secretary of state William Seward.

The Russian Orthodox Church established itself in Alaska after the creation of the Russian-American Company, and remains one of the most significant remaining Russian influences in the state.
More than 35 churches, some with distinctive onion-shaped domes, dot the Alaskan coast, according to an organization dedicated to preserving the buildings.
Alaska’s Orthodox diocese says it is the oldest in North America, and even maintains a seminary on Kodiak island.
A local dialect derived from Russian mixed with Indigenous languages survived for decades in various communities — particularly near the state’s largest city Anchorage — though it has now essentially vanished.
However near the massive glaciers on the southern Kenai peninsula, the Russian language is still being taught.
A small rural school of an Orthodox community known as the “Old Believers” set up in the 1960s teaches Russian to around a hundred students.

One of the most famous statements about the proximity of Alaska and Russia was made in 2008 by Sarah Palin, the state’s then-governor — and the vice presidential pick of Republican candidate John McCain.
“They’re our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska,” Palin said.
While it is not possible to see Russia from the Alaskan mainland, two islands facing each other in the Bering Strait are separated by just 2.5 miles (four kilometers).
Russia’s Big Diomede island is just west of the American Little Diomede island, where a few dozen people live.
Further south, two Russians landed on the remote St. Lawrence island — which is a few dozen miles from the Russian coast — in October, 2022 to seek asylum.
They fled just weeks after Putin ordered an unpopular mobilization of citizens to boost his invasion of Ukraine.
For years, the US military has said it regularly intercepts Russian aircraft that venture too close to American airspace in the region.
However Russia is ostensibly not interested in reclaiming the territory it once held, with Putin saying in 2014 that Alaska is “too cold.”

 

 


Trump wants to evict homeless from Washington and send them ‘far from the capital’

Updated 10 August 2025
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Trump wants to evict homeless from Washington and send them ‘far from the capital’

  • White House declined to explain what legal authority Trump would use to evict people from Washington
  • On any given night there are 3,782 single persons experiencing homelessness in D.C., a city of about 700,000 people

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump pledged on Sunday to evict homeless people from the nation’s capital and jail criminals, despite Washington’s mayor arguing there is no current spike in crime.
“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong,” Trump posted on the Truth Social platform.
The White House declined to explain what legal authority Trump would use to evict people from Washington. The Republican president controls only federal land and buildings in the city. Trump is planning to hold a press conference on Monday to “stop violent crime in Washington, D.C.” It was not clear whether he would announce more details about his eviction plan then.
Trump’s Truth Social post included pictures of tents and D.C. streets with some garbage on them. “I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before,” he said.
According to the Community Partnership, an organization working to reduce homelessness in D.C., on any given night there are 3,782 single persons experiencing homelessness in the city of about 700,000 people.
Most of the homeless individuals are in emergency shelters or transitional housing. About 800 are considered unsheltered or “on the street,” the organization says.
A White House official said on Friday that more federal law enforcement officers were being deployed in the city following a violent attack on a young Trump administration staffer that angered the president.
The Democratic mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, said on Sunday the capital was “not experiencing a crime spike.”
“It is true that we had a terrible spike in crime in 2023, but this is not 2023,” Bowser said on MSNBC’s The Weekend. “We have spent over the last two years driving down violent crime in this city, driving it down to a 30-year low.”
The city’s police department reports that violent crime in the first seven months of 2025 was down by 26 percent in D.C. compared with last year while overall crime was down about 7 percent.
Bowser said Trump is “very aware” of the city’s work with federal law enforcement after meeting with Trump several weeks ago in the Oval Office.
The US Congress has control of D.C.’s budget after the district was established in 1790 with land from neighboring Virginia and Maryland, but resident voters elect a mayor and city council.
For Trump to take over the city, Congress likely would have to pass a law revoking the law that established local elected leadership, which Trump would have to sign. Bowser on Sunday noted the president’s ability to call up the National Guard if he wanted, a tactic the administration used recently in Los Angeles after immigration protests over the objections of local officials.


Moscow strikes kill five in Ukraine, refinery hit in Russia

Updated 10 August 2025
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Moscow strikes kill five in Ukraine, refinery hit in Russia

  • A Russian glide bomb hit a busy bus station in the city of Zaporizhzhia on Sunday, wounding 12 people at once
  • Kyiv is trying to hamper Moscow’s ability to fund the more than three-year war of attrition by attacking its energy facilities

KYIV: A new round of Moscow’s shelling and drone attacks killed five people in Ukraine Sunday, authorities said, while Kyiv hit an oil refinery in Russia’s Saratov region.
There was no reduction in hostilities on the frontline, even as the United States and Russia agreed to hold a summit in a bid to resolve the conflict, which so far does not include Ukraine.
“Three people killed, one wounded in Zaporizhzhia region as a result of Russian shelling,” Ukraine’s national police said, adding that two more civilians died in the highly contested Donetsk region in the east.
A Russian glide bomb hit a busy bus station in the city of Zaporizhzhia in a separate afternoon strike, wounding 12 people at once, the local officials said, adding that a search and rescue operation was still ongoing.
Visuals from the site shared by the authorities showed rescuers pulling people from the rubble in the shattered central bus station building.
Three beachgoers were killed earlier in the Black Sea coastal city of Odesa, after they triggered a mine while swimming in a prohibited area which was mined.
The Ukrainian army claimed its drones had hit a large oil refinery in Russia’s western Saratov region, almost 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) away from the front line.
The Saratov governor, Roman Busargin, only gave a vague comment, saying that “one of the industrial enterprises was damaged” and adding that one person died as a result of the drone attack.
Another woman died in Russia’s region of Belgorod, often under Ukrainian fire due to its proximity to the frontline, the local governor said.
Kyiv is trying to hamper Moscow’s ability to fund the more than three-year war of attrition by attacking its oil and gas facilities, the key sources fueling the state budget.
Ukraine’s military claimed to have taken back the village of Bezsalivka in the Sumy region from the Russian army, which has made significant recent gains.
The focus of the Russian offensive is on eastern Ukraine, where it has stepped up gains in recent months against its less well-equipped opponents.
Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will meet in the US state of Alaska this Friday to try to resolve the grinding conflict, despite warnings from Ukraine and Europe that Kyiv must be part of negotiations.


UK police arrested 522 who backed banned pro-Palestine group

Police detain protester during rally challenging UK government’s proscription of “Palestine Action” under anti-terrorism laws.
Updated 10 August 2025
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UK police arrested 522 who backed banned pro-Palestine group

  • The 522 total is thought to be the highest ever recorded at a single protest in the UK capital
  • The force said the average age of those arrested on Saturday was 54, with six teenagers, 97 aged in their 70s and 15 octogenarians

LONDON: London’s police service said Sunday that officers had arrested 522 people the previous day for breaching anti-terror laws by supporting the recently proscribed group Palestine Action.

In an update to its previous arrest tally, the Met said all but one of those 522 arrests took place at a Parliament Square protest and were for displaying placards backing Palestine Action.

The other arrest for the same offense took place at nearby Russell Square as thousands rallied at a Palestine Coalition march demonstrating against Israel’s war in Gaza.

The 522 total is thought to be the highest ever recorded at a single protest in the UK capital.

The Met made 10 further arrests, including six for assaults on officers, though none were seriously injured, it added.

The force said the average age of those arrested on Saturday was 54, with six teenagers, 97 aged in their 70s and 15 octogenarians.

A roughly equal number of men and women were detained.

The government outlawed Palestine Action on July 5, days after it took responsibility for a break-in at an air force base in southern England that caused an estimated £7 million ($9.3 million) of damage to two aircraft.

The group said its activists were responding to Britain’s indirect military support for Israel amid the war in Gaza.

Britain’s interior ministry has insisted that Palestine Action was also suspected of other “serious attacks” that involved “violence, significant injuries and extensive criminal damage.”

In a statement following the latest mass arrests, interior minister Yvette Cooper defended the government’s decision, insisting: “UK national security and public safety must always be our top priority.”

“The assessments are very clear — this is not a non-violent organization,” she added.

But critics, including the United Nations and groups such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace, have condemned its proscription as legal overreach and a threat to free speech.

“If this was happening in another country, the UK government would be voicing grave concerns about freedom of speech and human rights,” Greenpeace UK’s co-executive director Areeba Hamid said Saturday.

She added the government had “now sunk low enough to turn the Met into thought police, direct action into terrorism.”

Police across the UK have made scores of similar arrests since July 5, when being a member of Palestine Action or supporting the group became a criminal offense punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Police announced this week that the first three people had been charged in the English and Welsh criminal justice system with such backing following their arrests at a July 5 demo.

In its update Sunday, the Met revealed a further 26 case files following other arrests on that day are due to be submitted to prosecutors “imminently” and that more would follow related to later protests.

It believes 30 of those held Saturday had been arrested at previous recent Palestine Action protests.

Eighteen people remained in custody Sunday lunchtime, but were set to be bailed within hours, the Met added.

It noted officers from its counter-terrorism command will now “work to put together the case files required to secure charges against those arrested as part of this operation.”