KARACHI, 16 November 2003 — Four members of a banned Islamic militant group were convicted and sentenced to death in Pakistan yesterday for the murder of a minority Shiite trader in a terrorist attack, a prosecutor said.
They also were found guilty of injuring the trader’s two employees.
Defense lawyers said the verdict and sentences would be appealed. The four belonged to the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group, which has been accused of dozens of terrorist attacks against Pakistan’s minority Shiites and assaults on Christian churches.
The men already had received sentences of death or life imprisonment in seven previous cases, prosecutor Mazhar Qayyum said.
Most of Pakistan’s 140 million people are Sunni. Their relations with the minority Shiites had been peaceful for years, but militant groups from both sides have recently attacked each other.
Judge Haqnawaz Baloch, presiding over an anti-terrorism court in the southern port city of Karachi, convicted the group’s chief, Akram Lahori, and three associates — Malik Tassadaq, Mohammed Azam and Attaullah — of attacking the Iranian Tea Co. and killing its Shiite owner, Ramzan Ali, in February 2002, Qayyum said.
The defendants also were fined 100,000 rupees ($2,000) each. The judge ordered the confiscation of all of their property.
Mohammed Azam also received a life sentence, and Attaullah a five-year term for injuring the two employees with hand grenades and gunfire, Qayyum said.
