May 6, 2006	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 7, 1427

BERLIN, May 5: A Pakistani student who allegedly tried to attack a German newspaper editor for reprinting blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) has hanged himself in jail here, a Pakistani diplomat said on Friday.

Amir Cheema, 28, was found dead on Wednesday in Moabit prison in Berlin where he had been held for six weeks awaiting a court appearance.

He had been charged by German prosecutors after entering the Berlin-based offices of Die Welt newspaper on March 20 armed with a knife.

“The German authorities told us he had a knife in his hand and he said he wanted to kill the chief editor of Die Welt,” the deputy head of the Pakistani mission here, Khalid Usman Qaiser, said.

Security guards at the newspaper prevented Mr Cheema from getting any further than the entrance to the building and the police were called, but the man resisted arrest before being detained, Mr Qaiser added.

On Friday, three lawmakers of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal successfully introduced a motion in the National Assembly to discuss the student’s death.

They claimed that the family believed Cheema was tortured to death, though they offered no evidence.

Mr Qaiser said he did not know where the man’s family got the impression that he was tortured.

“The information given to us by the local police we gave to our local authorities, who told his father, and if he reached that conclusion, I think that is his own conclusion,” he told the Associated Press.

German authorities have promised to give the embassy the results of the post-mortem and an investigation into how Cheema had hanged himself.

The embassy is seeking to secure the release of the body. Mr Qaiser said the embassy would be informed Monday when the body would be released so that it could be returned his family in Rawalpindi.

The prison authorities said Cheema had hanged himself with a noose made from his clothes.—Agencies

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