The chief, vice chief and finance secretary of the banned Harkatul Mujahideen Al-Almi were on Tuesday sentenced to life imprisonment – based on their alleged confessions – for conspiring to kill President Musharraf in 2002.Justice Ghulam Ali Samtio of ATC-I, Karachi division, gave the verdict against Muhammad Imran, Muhammad Haneef and Ashraf Khan. In a judgment announced inside Central Prison, Karachi, where the men were being tried for security reasons, co-accused Sharib alias Arsalan Farooqui, Jameel and Inspector Waseem Ahmed of the Rangers, were exonerated of the charges for want of evidence.
According to the prosecution, the accused men had parked a vehicle laden with explosives on Shahrah-e-Faisal on April 24, 2002. President Musharraf was scheduled to travel from the Karachi airport to the State Guest House along this route. The plan to kill him, however, failed as the remote-controlled device attached to the explosives apparently failed to detonate. The conspiracy came to the fore when the men were arrested in a bomb blast case at the US Consulate in Karachi. They confessed to this incident and were charged with attempted murder under Section 324 of the Criminal Procedure Code.