ISLAMABAD, 23 March 2006 — An Anti-Terrorist Court in Balochistan’s city of Sibbi yesterday convicted five militants in connection with a March 2005 bombing that killed 45 people at a Shiite shrine, sentencing two to death and three to life in prison, sources said.

The five men were arrested two days after the March 19, 2005, attack in Fatehpur, a town about 350 km south of Quetta.

“They (the men) played a direct role in the bomb attack,” Judge Mohammed Ismail said.

Deen Mohammed Marri, a prosecution lawyer, said the accused had confessed to their involvement in the attack and links with Sipah-e-Sahaba, an outlawed Sunni 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.

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.

Lawyers for the convicted men could not immediately be reached for comment. They have the right to appeal against their conviction and sentencing.

Marri said the five men were arrested from a house in the same region where the shrine attack happened, after another bomb they were making accidentally went off, injuring one of them.

Meanwhile, a land mine explosion injured at least five paramilitary troops in Balochistan late Tuesday, officials said.

“They (troops) were traveling to Dera Bugti region from Lehri town, some 150 km east of the capital Quetta when their military vehicle hit the land mine,” regional government spokesman Abdul Raziq Bugti said.

On March 10, at least 28 people were killed and seven others wounded when their tractor-trolley hit a land mine near the troubled Dera Bugti region.

Zardari’s Property Confiscated

In an unrelated development, an accountability court in Rawalpindi ordered confiscation of Asif Zardari’s property in the town of Nawabshah, Sanghar and Hyderabad.

The court order was passed after Zardari failed to appear before the Court which was trying him in the famous “BMW Car” case.

According to the prosecution Zardari, husband of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, had used a BMW car without paying its customs duty. Asif got bail in this case and went abroad for treatment. — Additional input from AP.