By IRNA
Karachi : An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan on Tuesday awarded life term in jail to three members of a banned extremist group in connection with planning murder attack on President Pervez Musharraf.
Three other members of the ‘Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami’ (International Movement of Mujahideen” were acquitted due to lack of evidence.
Judge Ghulam Ali Samteo also imposed a penalty of 100,000 rupees each on the group chief Muhammad Imran, deputy chief Muhammad Hanif and activist Muhammad Ashraf.
The judge gave the verdict inside Central Jail Karachi and also acquitted thee other accused, including an official of the paramilitary force ‘Rangers”.
Police claimed that the accused disclosed during interrogation that they had parked an explosive-laden vehicle on the route of President Musharraf’s cavalcades when he visited Karachi on April 26th 2002. But the vehicle could not explode as its electric switch did not work in time.
Defence lawyer Waheed Katpar said that the assertion of prosecution is not correct that the accused were sighted at the scene where the suspected vehicle was parked.
He argued that the accused were at different place when President Musharraf was passing through the city’s main Faisal highway. He said that the prosecution could not produce solid evidence.
Government lawyer Nematullah Randhawa said that the accused had confessed to crime and that their vehicle was used in the conspiracy.
He had pleaded for death penalty to the accused, saying that the accused had tried to push the country to lawlessness.
The alleged Musharraf attack plan was uncovered when police had detained few people in connection with a suicide attack outside U.S consulate in Karachi.