QUETTA, Pakistan - A Pakistani court on Wednesday convicted five Islamic militants in connection with a March 2005 bombing that killed 45 people at Shiite shrine, sentencing two to death and three to life in prison, a judge said. The five men, all Pakistanis, were arrested two days after the March 19, 2005, attack in Fatehpur, a town about 350 kilometers (210 miles) south of Quetta.Judge Mohammed Ismail told The Associated Press by telephone that he issued the ruling at a court in Sibi district, where Fatehpur is located, on Wednesday. “They (the men) played a direct role in the bomb attack,” he said.
Deen Mohammed Marri, a prosecution lawyer, said the accused had confessed to their involvement in the attack and links with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an outlawed Sunni Muslim militant group blamed for previous sectarian violence in Pakistan. The bomb exploded when about 20,000 people, mostly Shiites but also some Sunnis, had gathered at the shrine of a 19th century Shiite saint.
Mohammed Aslam and Abdul Aleem got the death penalty, and Mohammed Abdullah, Mohammed Arshad and Khalil Ahmad were given life sentences. “We had a very solid case and evidence against them,” Marri said.
Marri said the five men were arrested from a home adjacent to a mosque in the same region where the shrine attack happened, after another bomb they were making accidentally went off, injuring one of them.
| He'll wish the bomb finished the job off. |
| Reeeeaaaallly? Coulda fooled me ... |
| It's not the Esquimoux. |