RAWALPINDI, Feb 13: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is likely to produce all suspects arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks in a local anti-terrorism court on Saturday to seek their remand custody, Dawn has learnt.

A source said the FIA officials on Friday tried to obtain physical remand of the suspects from the ATC No. II without producing them in the court, but their efforts proved unproductive.

The arrested men were to be produced in the ATC, but the FIA was unable to bring them to the court due to unknown reasons.Relatives of one of the suspects, Hamad Sadiq, also kept waiting outside the courtroom along with their lawyer on Friday.

Adviser to Prime Minister on Interior Rehman Malik on Thursday announced that an FIR had been registered with the FIA’s Special Investigation Unit under the Anti-Terrorist Act.

Eight suspects had been identified in the FIR. Security agencies had detained six of the accused, while the remaining two are still at large.

The Federal Investigation Agency had requested the federal government to provide two bulletproof vehicles for the transportation of the accused for trial, which would be held in the Central Jail Adiala.

The government has also directed the authorities to ensure high-level security when the suspects are brought for prosecution.

Marriott blast suspect plea admitted

A suspect in the September 20 suicide truck attack on Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Friday filed an application with an anti-terrorism court, seeking acquittal in the case.

ATC No. I Judge Chaudhry Habibur Rehman fixed February 20 as the next date of hearing in the application of Rana Ilyas, who had claimed that he had been falsely implicated in the case to which he had no connection.

The court was to formally indict the accused – Mohammad Usman, Tehseenullah Jan, both residents of Peshawar; Hameed Afzal, a resident of Toba Tek Singh; and Rana Ilyas, a resident of Faisalabad –

in the Marriott suicide bombing case on Friday, but it could not do so after filing of the application.

More than 50 people, including some foreigners, were killed when a suicide bombed rammed his explosive-laden dumper truck into the security barrier.

The blast triggered a blaze that gutted almost the entire building.

In another case about planning terrorist attacks in Islamabad, an accused, Sikandar, moved a bail application before the court that would be taken up on March 13.

Eleven men accused of planting rockets outside the Parliament House and the offices of a spying agency were being tried in the court.

Petition against transfer dismissed

The Islamabad High Court on Friday ruled that a government officer sent on deputation to a department for a fixed period does not gain the right to serve the full term.

“A civil servant can be transferred and posted at anytime in the exigency of service and a deputationist can validly be repatriated prematurely so as to serve elsewhere,” Chief Justice Sardar Mohammd Aslam held while dismissing the petition of Dr Shafiur Rehman Afridi.

Dr Afridi had challenged the December 26, 2008, order of the CDA whereby he was repatriated to the Establishment Division, his parent department.

An officer of Office Management Group, Dr Afridi was selected in the CDA for three years as Director Staff to the then chairman Kamran Lashari.