Two Officers Convicted in Attacks on Pakistan President

A military court convicted two low-ranking army officers on charges of involvement in an assassination attempt on President Pervez Musharraf last year, a military spokesman said Friday.

Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said one of the officers was given the death penalty and the other was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

“They were tried under the military law and they can go into appeal,” he said.

Musharraf, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1999, has angered Islamic militants with his support for the Bush administration’s war on terrorism. He stopped backing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after it came under fire for harboring Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

He survived two assassination attempts last December in the garrison city of Rawalpindi near the capital.

Sultan said the officers were involved in the first assassination attempt Dec. 14, 2003, when a bomb blew up a bridge minutes after Musharraf’s motorcade had passed it. The trial of four other junior army officers and six air force officers was still underway, Sultan said.

The announcement of the verdicts came on the first anniversary of the second attempt, when suicide car bombers attacked Musharraf’s motorcade. Fifteen people were killed in that attack. Pakistani officials say militants linked to Al Qaeda masterminded the assassination attempts.

Musharraf has said that junior military officials were involved in the assassination attempts on him but dismissed suggestions that senior officials were involved. He also has said that a Libyan linked to Bin Laden’s network was a prime suspect.

Intelligence officials have identified the man as Abu Faraj Farj. In August authorities offered nearly $350,000 for information leading to Farj’s arrest.

Police said they had arrested four militants linked to Farj last week, foiling planned attacks in the eastern city of Lahore.

Farj is accused of working with Pakistani militant, Amjad Hussain Farooqi, who was killed Sept. 26 in a shootout with security forces in southern Pakistan. Farooqi was implicated in the 2002 kidnapping and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Authorities have said they are also holding an unspecified number of militants suspected of having ties to the masterminds in the attacks on Musharraf, but haven’t identified them.

Associated Press and Reuters were used in compiling this report.