A court in Pakistan on Tuesday convicted five Islamic militants and sentenced them to death for attacking police in a deadly bid to free an arrested comrade from custody, said lawyers.The five had opened fire on a police van carrying their companion on his way to jail from a court hearing in Karachi in 2002. The raid, which failed, killed a policeman and another prisoner and injured several other people.
Their lawyer MA Wasti said that the anti-terrorism court in Karachi sentenced the five men, all Pakistanis, to death for the killings and also imposed a fine.
They were also given 12-year prison terms for attacking police and the attempted murder of the injured. Wasti said they would appeal.
He said: "The evidence was contradictory and the verdict is flawed." Government prosecutor Mazhar Qayyum said he was satisfied with the judgment.
The men, in their 20 and early 30s, were said to be members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an al-Qaeda-linked Sunni Muslim militant group that the government banned in 2001. The group had been implicated in attacks on minority Shi'ite Muslims.