India's top court rejected on Friday the final plea of a Kashmiri man sentenced to death for helping to launch the deadly attack on the nation's parliament in 2001. Mohammed Afzal, an Indian national, had filed a petition before the Supreme Court on the grounds he had been denied satisfactory legal representation during his trial. His only hope now lays in a mercy petition pending before the country's president. Under Indian law, the sentence will not be carried out until the president rejects the appeal.Five gunmen stormed the heavily-guarded parliament complex on December 13, 2001 but were killed by security forces before they could enter the building where lawmakers sit. Ten other people, mostly security men, were also killed in the exchange of fire. Afzal was convicted of helping organise arms for the parliament raiders and a place for them to stay. He denied any involvement in the conspiracy and said he had been tortured by police into making false confessions. The court also rejected a plea by Shaukat Hussain, who had challenged his conviction for not "revealing the conspiracy to attack Parliament". He has been sentenced to 10 years in jail.
Afzal, a short, bespectacled man in his late thirties, said in a petition to President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam circulated by the Society for the Protection of Detainees' and Prisoners' Rights that he had not supported the parliament raid in any way. "I do not think that the attack on the parliament served the cause of the Kashmiri people and I am genuinely sorry for the family members of those who died doing their duty," he was quoted as saying.
India blamed the parliament attack on Pakistan, which denied responsibility. It brought the nuclear-armed rivals dangerously close to their fourth war. A city court had fixed Oct. 20 last year as the day for Afzal's execution in a Delhi jail before it was put off because of the fresh petition. Executions in India are carried out by hanging.