RAWALPINDI, Dec 19: An anti-terrorism court here on Friday declared three men accused of planning the suicide attack on Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel as proclaimed offenders and directed the law enforcement agencies to confiscate their properties.
ATC No. 1 Judge Chaudhry Habibur Rehman issued permanent arrest warrants of the accused – Ashfaq Ahmed, Mohammad Imran and Abraruddin Ashfaq Ahmed – after declaring them proclaimed offenders as the Secretariat police could not arrest them.
The court fixed January 21 as the next date of hearing to formally indict the four arrested accused – Dr Mohammad Usman, Tehseenullah Jan of Peshawar, Hameed Afzal of Toba Tek Singh and Rana Ilyas of Faisalabad – as the police had completed investigations against them.
Fifty-four people, including a few foreigners, were killed and 266 others were injured when a dumper truck laden with over 600kg explosives hit Marriott’s front gate after Iftar on September 20. The attack has been described as the most devastating one in the federal capital and “Pakistan’s 9/11”.
The Secretariat police registered a case the same day against unknown persons.
Meanwhile, the Lahore High Court (LHC) Rawalpindi bench on Friday directed a resident of Taxila to file his petition against the planned boundary wall around the Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) in Wah afresh after removing some legal ambiguities.
Justice Abdul Shakoor Paracha heard the petition of Mohammad Ayub, a resident of village Budho in Taxila town, who sought halt to the planned construction of a wall as it would block a 100-year-old road, the only access between many villages and Wah. The court observed that it was not clear in the petition whether all residents of the villages would be affected or was the petitioner the only one.
Fazil Siddique, the lawyer for Mr Ayub, had maintained that residents of Budho, Gudho, Gahri Afghan villages would be affected after their only access to the markets and hospitals of Wah would be closed by the boundary wall being raised by the POF Board.
Making POF Board chairman, POF director admin, POF director civil works, director military lands Rawalpindi, executive officer Wah Cantt, Punjab home secretary and district officer revenue Rawalpindi as respondents, the petitioner had prayed that the defence organisation should be stopped from raising the wall.
In a written reply to the court, the POF administration had maintained that in light of the prevailing circumstances it had decided to construct a boundary wall around the factories and estate area to avoid terrorist attacks, similar to those carried out on August 21 this year killing 90 people and wounding many others.