September 30, 2008	Tuesday	Ramazan 29, 2008

RAWALPINDI, Sept 29: An anti-terrorism court (ATC) here on Monday dropped terrorism charges against a man for allegedly making threatening calls to the headquarters of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in Islamabad and transferred the case to the court of district and sessions judge (DSJ).

ATC-I Judge Chaudhry Habibur Rehman announced that section 7of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) 1997 was not applicable in the case of Zeeshan Ahmed as he had made calls in which he threatened to bomb the offices of FIA to implicate another man with whom he had a monetary dispute.

According to the lawyer of the accused he neither had any criminal record nor was he associated with any banned terrorist outfit. The calls he made to the FIA were intended to implicate Abid Mughal in the false case as he had a monetary dispute with him. The investigators had cleared Abid in the preliminary investigations. The petitioner said terrorism charges could not be leveled against him.

According to details, Zeeshan was arrested by the FIA from Dhoke Khabba in Rawalpindi in June this year for allegedly making threatening calls to the headquarters of the agency to blow it up by suicide bombing. The FIA had to close their offices for three days in view of the attacks on its offices in Lahore. The accused was identified through the mobile phone handset he used to make calls.

Meanwhile, ATC-II Judge Sakhi Mohammad Kahot extended the judicial remand of a suspected suicide bomber for 14 days after the investigators said they needed more time to submit the charge-sheet against him.

The accused, Hameedullah Mehsud, was arrested by the law enforcement agencies on August 21 soon after two suicide bombers blew themselves outside the gates of Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) Wah Cantonment, killing more than 70 people and injuring over a 100. A suicide vest was also recovered by the police from the toilet of a nearby mosque.

The police registered a criminal case against the unknown persons under sections 302 (murder), 324 (attempted murder), 435 (mischief by fire or explosive substance with intent to cause damage), 436 (mischief by fire or explosive substance with intent to destroy house, etc) 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), sections 3 and 4 of explosive act and section 7 of terrorism act.

On the information provided by Hameedullah, the police recovered suicide vests, hand grenades and other explosives from Akora Khattak in Nowshera district on August 25 and a case was registered against him with the area police. Wah police have kept Hameedullah in physical custody for 27 days since his arrest.