Death sentences upheld for US cultural centre attackers
Jamiluddin Nasir, Aftab Ansari were arrested in 2002 and charged with waging war against India
Kolkata: A high court in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata upheld death sentences on Friday for two men convicted of involvement in a 2002 attack on a US cultural centre in which five policemen died.
Jamiluddin Nasir and Aftab Ansari were arrested in 2002 and charged with waging war against India after two men on a motorcycle fired on guards at the centre in the eastern city of Kolkata.
Ansari, alias Farhan Malek, was extradited from the UAE to India in 2002 along with his associate Rajinder Kumar to face charges over the attack.
The two men accused of the shooting were never found but Nasir and Ansari – described by police as a gangster with links to militants – were arrested and sentenced to death in 2005.
"The high court rejected the appeals of Ansari and Nasir and confirmed their death sentences," Asimesh Goswami, chief public prosecutor of the Calcutta High Court, told reporters.
Ansari was accused of masterminding the attack on the American Cultural Centre, in which the two motorcyclists sprayed the outside of the building with automatic weapons fire.
Five police officers were killed and 14 others were injured in the January 22, 2002 attack in the heart of Kolkata. No foreigners were hurt. At the same hearing Friday, the court overturned death penalties given to three other men accused in the attack, sentencing them to life imprisonment. It also cleared two other men facing the same charges, for lack of evidence.
Police said Ansari claimed responsibility for the attack in telephone calls to them. They claimed Ansari had said the attack was to avenge the killing in 2001 of a close associate, Asif Reza Khan, by Gujarat police.
After his arrest in the UAE, Ansari had denied any involvement in the attack. The then Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh had formally thanked the UAE government for its cooperation and said: "By cooperating with Indian security officials and nabbing them, the UAE authorities have sent out a clear message that they have zero tolerance on terrorism.”
Indian police say Ansari was part of a sprawling underground network involving international crime syndicates, cross-border militant outfits and the Al Qaida terror network. India’s Supreme Court stipulates the death penalty be used only in the "rarest of rare cases." No date was announced for when the sentences will be carried out.
The government is guarded about disclosing its death penalty records but the last known execution was in August 2004, when a man convicted of killing a schoolgirl was hanged in Kolkata.
