11 Frenchmen killed by explosives, doctors tell court

Doctors who treated the French and Pakistani victims of a suicide car bomb attack last May testified in the trial yesterday of two militants charged with plotting the attack.

The appearance of three doctors marked the formal opening of the trial, public prosecutor Maula Bux Bhatti said.

"We have today made the doctors appear in the court to record their statement and thus the case has formally begun," Bhatti said.

The three doctors who treated the injured and examined the bodies recorded their statements before the anti-terrorist court judge Feroze Mahmood Bhatti. They said that the victims suffered wounds because of the explosives.

"It is a routine kind of statement in which doctors determine the cause of the death and injuries to the victims," the public prosecutor, told Gulf News.

Asif Zaheer and Rizwan Ahmed alias Basheer have been accused of terrorism, murder, possession of explosives and conspiracy to murder for their alleged involvement in the devastating suicide bombing outside the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi last May 8. The 11 Frenchmen who died in the attack were technicians helping Pakistan build submarines. The three Pakistanis included the suicide bomber Rasheed, and two passers-by.

M.R. Syed, defence lawyer of Zaheer, said the charges against his clients were very strong.

"The prosecution has a couple of eye witnesses and the confessional statement of the accused recorded before a magistrate," he said. "It has made the case very difficult. But still I would say we have 50 per cent chance to win the case," he said, giving no details about his game-plan in the legal battle.

The pair had denied the charges in court and pleaded that they were innocent. But Syed said there was a precedent in which the Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty given on the basis of the confessional statement.

Two other suspected militants - Mohammed Sohail and Adnan Qamar - are being tried in absentia on similar charges. Police arrested Zaheer in December and Ahmed was nabbed in January. In their initial statements to the police, they proudly confessed to their crime, saying that they planned it as a service to Islam.