August 07, 2008	Thursday	Sha’aban 4, 1429

ISLAMABAD, Aug 6: A lawyer for an alleged Al Qaeda-linked militant said on Wednesday that he had asked a court to halt the sale of a book by slain ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto that he claimed defamed his client.

Ms Bhutto’s allegations in “Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West” that Qari Saifullah Akhtar was involved in an October bombing in Karachi that killed some 150 people were “baseless”, attorney Hashmat Habib said.

Habib said he was also seeking more than $200 million in damages from the British publishers of Ms Bhutto’s book, Simon & Schuster, printers, sellers, and her widowed husband Asif Ali Zardari as her heir and “beneficiary”.

Habib said an additional session court in Islamabad had issued notices to the defendants to appear on Sept 5.

Court officials could not immediately be reached for comment, and neither could a spokesman for Zardari.

Ms Bhutto survived the October attack, which targeted her motorcade as supporters welcomed her back from exile. The ex-premier was killed in a gun and suicide bomb attack in December in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. She had finished writing the book shortly before her assassination.

The book was published in mid-February, and Akhtar was arrested later in the month. He was freed in June and was not formally charged.

Akhtar has previously faced accusations of links to two failed assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf and allegations that he ran an Al Qaeda training camp at Rishkhor in Afghanistan, which was visited by Osama bin Laden.

The attorney has acknowledged that Akhtar used to be a commander of an Islamic guerrilla faction that fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but says Akhtar had renounced militancy.

Habib said Akhtar was an “an internationally recognised Mujahid of Islam”, who had been arrested several times but was never tried by any court.

“All of these allegations are baseless and concocted ... the book should be withdrawn from all the sale points throughout the world,” Habib said.

He also demanded that the defendants apologise for damaging Akhar’s reputation.—AP