Two Pakistani physicians were accused on Thursday of treating wounded al-Qaida and other extremist suspects in the southern port city of Karachi. Police arrested the doctors - brothers Akmal Waheed and Arshad Waheed - on July 2 in connection with an assassination attempt on Lt. Gen. Ahsan Saleem Hayat, Karachi’s top army general. Hayat escaped unhurt but 10 people were killed. The prosecution told a judge in Karachi it doesn’t have "evidence to prove direct involvement of the two brothers" in the attack against Hayat, but that fresh information suggests they treated an al-Qaida suspect, Abu Musab, last year.
Qazi Chand, a senior police investigator, told The Associated Press that Musab escaped a police raid on a house in Karachi on January 9, 2003, despite being wounded in a shootout. "We know that he (Musab) was later treated by these two brothers," Chand said. The Waheeds also recently treated two members of a domestic extremist Islamic group, Jundallah - accused of launching the attack on Hayat - and another al-Qaida suspect wounded in Afghanistan in 2003, the prosecution alleged. Defence lawyer Abdul Qadir Jatoi, said the case against his clients is weak, and that the men committed no crime. "I will prove it in court," he said. The trial judge allowed police to hold the men for questioning until next Thursday. |