KARACHI, Jan 8: An anti-terrorism court reserved its judgment on Tuesday in a case against six alleged militants of the Harkatul Mujahideen al-Alami regarding a conspiracy to kill President Pervez Musharraf in Karachi in 2002.

Judge Ghulam Ali Samtio reserved his verdict till Jan 15 after the defence and prosecution concluded their arguments.

The six suspected militants, Mohammad Imran, Mohammad Hanif alias Ayub, Mohammad Ashraf, Waseem Akhtar, Mohammad Jamil and Arsalan alias Sharib, were facing retrial inside the Central Prison Karachi for security reasons.

The prosecution has based its arguments on the confessional statements given by Imran, Hanif and Ashraf. It insisted that the accused had given their confessional statements voluntarily before a judicial magistrate, and quoted them as saying that they, along with their other accomplices, had tried to kill President Musharraf after taking umbrage at his anti-Taliban and pro-US policies. It called for capital punishment to be awarded to the accused.

The defence told the court that the confessional statements were taken under duress. It said that police had tortured the accused to force them to confess to the crime. It prayed for benefit of the doubt to be given to the accused, maintaining that the prosecution story was cooked up, false and full of contradictions.

According to the prosecution, the six accused have been charged with attempting to assassinate the president by parking an explosives-laden vehicle near Falak Naz Plaza and trying to blow it up with remote-control. The presidential cavalcade was about to pass by and the accused were set to blow up the vehicle but the remote control failed, foiling their plot, according to the prosecution.

In the course of the investigations, the police and law-enforcement agencies arrested Mohammad Imran and Mohammad Hanif, who confessed to their involvement in the plot during the interrogation, it claimed.

According to the prosecution, accused Waseem Akhtar, a Rangers inspector, was assigned the duty of giving information about Mr Musharraf’s arrival.

It was alleged that Kamran, who had positioned himself at a petrol pump near Star Gate on Sharea Faisal, pushed the remote control button several times but the vehicle did not blow up. The accused had allegedly rented out the shop in a fake name and accused Aamir used to sit in it.

According to the charge-sheet, Sharib had stuffed the vehicle with explosives, and Naveed and Jamil allegedly assembled the explosive device and its remote control.

It was alleged that the Rangers official had given information regarding the arrival of the president and Mohammed Hanif, Imran, Jamil, Naveed, Aamir and Sharib had positioned themselves near the Awami Markaz to ascertain if the president’s motorcade had blown up.

Earlier, an anti-terrorism appellate bench of the Sindh High Court set aside the sentences awarded to the accused by the ATC and directed the latter to hold a retrial.

Summoning the dead

Interestingly, a rather odd situation arose when the court in November 2007 scheduled the testimony of the security officer who was responsible for the president’s security arrangements on the day of the attempted assassination. The officer, SSP Aziz-ur-Rahman, had been murdered in October 2007.

“The defence had requested for the statement of the police officer,” Niamat Randhawa, Special Public Prosecutor, had said. “The late officer had never been asked before to present himself before the court, so he was not a witness in the case as such,” he added.

Mr Randhawa said that since the murder of the former SSP was not linked with the conspiracy case, the prosecution did not consider it part of the investigation.

“His murder was a totally different case, so it was not taken so seriously while prosecuting President Musharraf’s murder conspiracy case,” he added.

Mr Rahman was gunned down along with his armed guard by unknown assailants in the New Karachi Industrial Area last October.

His daylight murder was a grim reminder of the 1997 incident in which his two sons, one of whom was a police officer, were murdered in Al-Falah Society.