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| India-Pakistan | |
| Six accused in Mumbai case seek acquittal | |
| 2009-12-13 | |
[Dawn] Six of the seven men accused of involvement in planning last year's Mumbai attacks have sought acquittal on the ground that they could not be tried for offences committed in India.
Malik Mohammad Akram Awan, special judge of the Anti-Terrorism Court-I, directed the prosecution to submit their arguments on Dec 19 when the court would take up the three petitions. Ammad Amin Sadiq, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, Mazhar Iqbal, Abdul Majid, Shahid Jameel Riaz and Mohammad Yunus Anjum moved two applications under Section 265-K of the Criminal Procedure Code (power of court to acquit an accused at any stage), saying that they could not be tried for offences committed in India. Khwaja Sultan Ahmed, who represents the accused, maintained that the prosecution had relied on Section 4 of the Pakistan Penal Code (extension of the code on extra-territorial offences) and the law could only be referred to offences under PPC and not acts of terrorism. The accused said that they had been charged with criminal conspiracy for carrying out the Nov 26, 2008, attacks in Mumbai, but without mentioning the motive or the place where they had hatched the conspiracy. They said according to law, the charge-sheet should have been specific about the motive. According to them, the trial judge had 'not applied his independent mind while charging them' because their charge-sheet was the same that they had objected to earlier. The second petition assailed the court's decision to conduct a separate trial of Ajmal Kasab, who is being tried in India. They said according to Pakistani laws, separate trials of the accused could not be held. They also urged the court to direct the prosecution to give legal reasons for not producing Kasab in court. Another application challenged the admissibility of Kasab's confessional statement in a Pakistani court. It said that the statement handed over to the accused was 'not duly verified'. They said that their lawyers could not cross-examine Ajmal Kasab or the magistrate who had recorded his confessional statement in India 'as necessary part of the trial'. Under the circumstances, they argued, Ajmal Kasab's statement 'cannot be considered legal'. | |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 "Aquittal" yeah? Get down and give me ten. All the way up and all the way down, maggot. Call 'em out for me. Louder. |
| Posted by: Angleton9 2009-12-13 08:26 |