KARACHI, April 7: The prosecution in the US Consulate car bombing case pleaded on Monday for awarding capital punishment to the five accused as the court fixed April 14 for pronouncement of the judgement in the case.

Judge Aley Maqbool Rizvi of the Anti-terrorism Court No. 1, who conducted the trial inside the Central Prison, reserved the verdict after hearing final arguments from the prosecution and the defence.

The chief of the Harkatul Mujahideen Al-Aalmi, Mohammed Imran, his deputy Mohammed Ashraf, finance secretary Mohammed Hanif, and two party workers Sharib and Zubair, have been prosecuted for their involvement in the US Consulate carbombing that had killed 12 people, including five women.

They were charged with the offences under sections 302, 324,427 and 109 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), section 3/4 of the Explosive Act, and section 7-B of the Anti-terrorist Act.

The prosecution examined over 25 witnesses, including two eye- witnesses who had seen the accused embracing with their accomplices at a traffic signal close to the spot.

A four-member team of prosecutors, appointed against a “professional fee” of Rs400,000 under a notification, represented the state.

AAG Habib Ahmed forwarded the final arguments on behalf of the prosecution. He prayed to the court to award death penalty to the accused as the prosecution had brought sufficient evidence against them.

The AAG referred to the confessional statement of accused Hanif, deposition of the two eye-witnesses and the identification parade of the accused before a judicial magistrate.

The defence counsel — Abdul Wahid Katpur, Khawaja Naveed, Raza Abidi and Maqboolur Rahman — contended that the prosecution could not establish its case against their clients.

Khawaja Naveed, counsel for Ashraf, argued that nothing had been stated against his client in the case of prosecution.

He said the only evidence against him was a confession of a co-accused, which was too “imported” from another case, registered by the Airport police.

He contended that the confessional statement spoke nothing about the involvement of his client as it was exculpatory in nature.

Abdul Waheed Katpur, counsel for Hanif and Imran, argued that the case of prosecution was full of contradictions. He said the depositions of the prosecution witnesses were contradictory to each other.

According to him, the confessional statements of the accused were the result of torture by the police.

He also contended that the legal procedure was not followed while recording the confessional statements.

He also called in question the conducting of the identification parade and argued that no description of the accused was given in the FIR.

The two other defence counsel, who adopted the arguments of fellow counsels, also argued the case briefly.