RAWALPINDI, Nov 16 A trial court convicted on Tuesday nine men for possessing explosives, cons- piring to carry out terro- rist attacks and aiding the killing of army surgeon-general Mushtaq Baig in Rawalpindi.
Magistrate Syed Zaigham Abbas Rizvi convicted Ilyas alias Qari Jamil of Chakwal, Mohammad Rizwan alias Shamsul Haq of Karachi, Dr Abdul Razzaq of Lahore, Faisal Ahmed Khan of Bhakkar, Zeeshan Jalil alias Khizr of Karachi, Mohammad Sarfaraz alias Mohammad Khan of Karachi, Mohammad Naeem Shakir alias Zubair of Sheikhupura, Mohammad Nadeem alias Babu Salahuddin of Rawalpindi and Osama bin Waheed alias Hadayatullah of Bhakkar as a large quantity of explosives was recovered from them.
According to district public prosecutor Malik Mohammad Asghar, the court gave seven years' imprisonment to each of the convicts for possessing explosives without legal permission, three years' jail for carrying unlicensed weapons and ordered confiscation of their movable and immovable property for hatching the criminal conspiracy to carry out terrorist attacks.
The convicted men were arrested by Saddar Beruni police on Jan 29, 2009, from Dhok Lakhan near Dhamial Army Aviation Base when they were inside a house with 100kg of explosives, 20 sacks of potassium chloride and a number of detonators.
An anti-terrorism court had transferred their case to the magistrate in December last year, dropping terrorism charges against them.
On May 13, the ATC acquitted the men in two terrorism cases, of killing army surgeon-general Mushtaq Baig and the suicide attack on the bus carrying army personnel.
The first attack was carried out on Feb 4, 2008, when an attacker on a motorbike hit a minibus carrying personnel of armed forces and killed six officers, including a lieutenant-colonel and a major, near R.A. Bazaar.
The second suicide attack was carried out on Feb 25, 2008, after the attacker hit the official staff car carrying surgeon-general Mushtaq Baig near TNT intersection on the Mall Road in the afternoon. Eight people were killed in the attack.
The accused had said in the court that they were picked up by intelligence agencies at different times and from different places in early 2008 and the petitions for their recovery were filed in Sindh and Islamabad High Courts.
Later, they were implicated in false terrorism cases after the Supreme Court in a suo motu notice directed authorities concerned to trace the missing men.