A Pakistani court has sentenced three Islamic militants to death for killing four women as they prayed at a church near the capital last year, a police official said Friday. The three men were captured shortly after the Aug. 9 attack on the grounds of a Presbyterian hospital in Taxila, a small town about 25 miles northwest of Islamabad. They were convicted and sentenced on Thursday. The women were all nurses at an adjacent hospital. They died as attackers hurled grenades at worshippers leaving the church. One assailant also died in the assault. A police official in Taxila, Jan Mohammed, told The Associated Press by phone that the judge ordered three other defendants freed for lack of evidence.
| "Yeah. The witnesses are all dead!" |
The Taxila hospital is supported by the Presbyterian Church USA and the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan. It was founded in 1922 and treats mostly poor Muslims, specializing in eye diseases. The attack was one of several against foreigners and minority Christians in the months following President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's decision to ally himself with the United States in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. On March 17, 2002, a grenade attack on a Protestant church in Islamabad's heavily guarded diplomatic quarter killed five people. In October 2002, 16 people were killed in an attack on a Christian church in Behawalpur, a city in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province. In July, assailants shot and killed Rev. George Ibrahim, a Roman Catholic priest, at his home near a church. The priest had allegedly received death threats from militants after his church took over a school in Ranala Kot, a village about 180 miles south of Islamabad.
| Christian priests notoriously being unarmed... |
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