Hanged Pakistani prisoners faced 10 charges

Five of the six prisoners executed since Friday in Pakistan faced 10 different charges apart from being involved in the assassination attempt on the then president General Pervez Musharraf, a media report said Tuesday.

According to the chargesheet issued to these convicts in 2003, Naik Arshad Mehmood of the Special Services Group's (SSG) and his co-accused were said to have planned the attack on Musharraf's convoy at the army's Mansar Camp near Punjab prvoince's Attock district, the Dawn reported.

The chargesheet states that they were involved in "suicidal attacks on the motorcade of the president of Pakistan" in December 2003, which "resulted in the death of 14 persons".

The chargesheet also states that Mehmood hatched "a criminal conspiracy" between 2001 and 2003 and "agreed with the co-accused Zubair Ahmed, Rashid Qureshi, Ghulam Sarwar, Ikhlas Ahmed aka Roosi, Adnan Khan, Ameer Sohail, Rana Naveed, and Shazia Mubashir to carry out suicide attacks against the president of Pakistan and chief of army staff".

Although there were two assassination attempts against Musharraf in the same month, first December 14, then December 25, but the chargesheet only mentions the December 25 attack.

No loss of life was reported in the first attack.

The chargesheet claims that Arshad, the main accused in the case, was not only part of the conspiracy to kill Musharraf but was also actively involved in carrying out the attacks.

The chargesheet alleges that Rashid Qureshi alias Tipu, Ghulam Sarwar alias Salahuddin, and Ikhlas Ahmed alias Roosi had "attempted to divert Naik Arshad Mehmoood, Naik Mohammad Hanif, Lance Naik Zafar, Iqbal Dogar and other (military personnel) from their allegiance to the government of Pakistan".

Ikhlas Ahmed a.k.a. Roosi was the son of Akhlaq Ahmed, a Kashmiri who married a Russian woman while in Russia to pursue a degree in medicine, which explains how he came to be known as 'Roosi'.

Ameer Sohail and Rana Naveed were also accused of being part of the conspiracy to attack Musharraf's convoy.

Initially, a military court sentenced them to life in prison, but a military appellate court raised their sentence from life imprisonment to death penalty. However, in March last year, the Supreme Court revoked the military appellate court's decision, limiting the sentence to life imprisonment.