PAKISTAN. FIVE SENTENCED TO HANG FOR MUSHARRAF PLOT

Pakistan sentenced five men, including a soldier, to hang for their role in an al Qaeda-inspired assassination attempt on President Pervez Musharraf in late 2003, a military spokesman said. Musharraf, one of the West's main allies in a global war on terror, narrowly escaped when two suicide car bombers rammed his motorcade on Christmas Day, 2003, in Rawalpindi, the garrison city adjoining Islamabad. Fifteen people were killed.
It was the second attempt on his life that month, and several soldiers, air force personnel and militants were arrested after the two attacks.
Major-General Shaukat Sultan named the condemned men as trooper Arshad Mehmood, and civilians Zubair Ahmed, Rashid Bhatti, Rashid Qureshi, Ghulam Sarwar and Akhlas Akhlak Ahmed, a russian national.
"They were convicted in the assassination attempt on the president on December 25, 2003," Sultan told Reuters. The authorities have not disclosed when the executions will be carried out.
Another man was sentenced to life imprisonment while two more were given jail terms of 15 and 20 years, he said. The spokesman declined to say which court handed down the sentences but said,"the trial was held under relevant provisions of law and then they were given sentences." Last week a soldier was hanged for his role in the first failed assassination attempt on December 14, 2003, when the president's car passed over a bridge in Rawalpindi seconds before it was blown up.