KARACHI, Jan 16: The three militants of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami who were convicted on Tuesday by an anti-terrorism court in a 2002 plot to kill President Pervez Musharraf will challenge their conviction in the Sindh High Court, one of the defence lawyers told Dawn on Wednesday.
On Jan 15, an anti-terrorism court headed by Judge Ghulam Ali Samtio acquitted former Rangers inspector Waseem Akhtar, Arsalan alias Sharib and Mohammad Jamil, but convicted three others, Mohammad Imran, Mohammad Hanif and Mohammad Ashraf, in the Musharraf murder plot case.
Defence counsel Mushtaq Ahmed told Dawn that an appeal against the ATC judgment would be filed before the SHC on the ground that the trial court had relied upon the confessional statements of Imran, Hanif and Ashraf despite the fact that the prosecution had failed to produce any circumstantial, material or supporting evidence against them.
He said the confessional statements of the three convicts were recorded in July 2002 though they had been in the custody of law-enforcement agencies since June 2002. On the other hand, he said, their confessional statements were recorded in English and not in their own handwriting, thus the statements could not be considered a voluntary act done without any coercion.
Mr Ahmed said a Supreme Court bench had not accepted the confessional statements of Mohammad Imran and others in the 2002 US consulate-general bombing case because they were recorded in English and the procedure adopted was not in accordance with the law.
He said that all the three confessional statements were not identical in nature and, therefore, the charge of hatching a conspiracy (Section 120) could not be proved against them.
”The judgment contains several legal defects,” he said. “I have spoken to senior defence counsel Abdul Waheed Katpar and he told me that we would challenge the verdict in the SHC.”
Meanwhile, the state is likely to file an appeal against the acquittal of the three alleged militants of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami, who had been found not guilty in the 2002 plot to kill President Pervez Musharraf case.
However, the state did not challenge the 2003 judgment of the ATC through which the court awarded 10-year imprisonment to Imran, Hanif and Ashraf and acquitted Waseem and Sharib in the same case.
“We will recommend to the government to file an appeal against the ATC judgment before the SHC,” said special prosecutor Mazhar Qayum.
