KARACHI, 30 March 2004 — A Pakistani court yesterday sentenced a militant to death for killing two policemen guarding the US Consulate in the southern city of Karachi last year.
Defense lawyers immediately vowed to appeal the conviction.
Zulfikar Ali, 37, was given the death sentence and fined 200,000 rupees ($3,500) by anti-terrorism court judge Arshad Noor for the February 2003 attack, his lawyer Nasir Mahmood said.
“The judge announced the verdict in the presence of the accused, saying the prosecution has proved its case as far as killing of policemen was concerned,” Mahmood told AFP. Ali was arrested at the scene after firing at policemen guarding the consulate on a busy road in downtown Karachi.
The defense team had contested that Ali had been wrongly arrested and simply an “unstable” person who had no connection to any militant organization. “Police have falsely implicated him in order to close the case,” Mahmood said, adding that an appeal would be filed next week.
The attack was the second deadly strike on the consulate, but as in the first attack in June 2002, no consulate personnel were injured. On June 14, 2002, 12 Pakistani bystanders, guards and passing drivers were killed in a suicide car bomb attack.
A third attack was foiled by police earlier this month, when they discovered and defused 650 kilograms of powerful chemical explosives in a van parked outside the building.
Five militants from the radical Harkatul Mujahedeen Al-Alami organization were convicted in March 2003 of the June 2002 attack. Two were sentenced to death and two were sentenced to life imprisonment. All four have appealed their convictions.
