Musharraf assassination plot case judgement on 18th

KARACHI: Judge Aal-e-Maqbool Rizvi of the Anti-Terrorism Court I on Saturday reserved his judgment for Oct. 18 in the case of the failed attempt to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf last year.

The prosecution team, led by Sindh’s additional advocate general Habib Ahmed sought capital punishment for all the accused, who belong to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen Al-Alami.

The prosecutors in their final arguments contended that the prosecution had proved that on April 26, 2003, Mohammad Imran, the chief of the organization, Mohammad Hanif, his deputy, and Mohammad Ashraf, Sharib and Arslan Farooqi and a Rangers inspector Waseem Akhtar had planned to ram an explosives-packed vehicle into the president’s motorcade on Sharae Faisal. The defence team, led by Abdul Wahid Katpar, sought the acquittal of the accused contending that in the FIR and charge sheet the police showed the incident to have taken place on April 27. He contended that after realizing that president was not in the city that day, the prosecution changed the date and there was overwriting in the dates column in the charge sheet. The defence also argued the accused were shown to have been arrested on June 19, 2003, while their confessional statements were recorded in July. The higher courts had in their judgments been declaring confessional statements with such a long time lags as inadmissible and having no legal value, the defence argued. In addition, the defence says, the confessional statements of Imran, Hanif and Muhammad Ashraf are contradictory to each other.

The defence, whose other members are Khawaja Naveed Ahmed, Raza Ali Abidi and Maqboolur Rehman, says Sharib had been arrested on the basis of the statement of a co-accused, and this was also inadmissible in law. The trial is being conducted in the Karachi Central Prison for reasons of security. —Staff Report

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