PAKISTAN. COURT REJECTS 'SPY' PLEA

Pakistan's Supreme Court rejected a review appeal by Manjit Singh, an Indian on death row for spying. He had been convicted of spying and carrying out a series of bombings in 1990 which killed 14 people. His family said he was Sarabjit Singh - a farmer who accidentally crossed over and was a victim of mistaken identity.
Singh's lawyer, Rana Abdul Hameed, had filed four review appeals asking the court to reconsider its decision. Three of the appeals are still pending.
A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court turned down the first appeal against Singh's death sentence saying that the appeal was filed sixty days later than the stipulated period of appeal, Hameed said. The court also ruled that as this review appeal was not included in an earlier appeal petition, it was being rejected.
Singh was arrested in 1990 for four bomb blasts in the cities of Lahore and Faisalabad. He was tried in a Lahore court and sentenced to death in 1991.
The death sentence was subsequently upheld by both the High Court and the Supreme Court. Hameed filed the four review petitions in 2005 after Supreme Court upheld the death penalty.
Only a clemency from President Pervez Musharraf could revoke the death penalty, if the other review appeals also failed.
In 2005 Singh's family launched the "Save Sarabjit Campaign" which gathered a lot of support in India. The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also discussed the death sentence with Gen Musharraf. Singh's family had threatened to commit suicide if his death sentence was carried out.