A three-member bench of the Supreme Court on Tuesday adjourned hearing till fist week of November on review pleas of two persons convicted in Musharraf attack case after an army officer informed the court that their (Defense Ministry) counsel Mujeebur Rehman was abroad and would come back on November 1.
The bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Tariq Parvez and Justice Ghulam Rabbani was hearing two review petitions filed by Rana Muhammad Naveed and Aamir Sohail, who were convicted in Musharraf attack case, against enhancement of their sentence by the military court. Hashmat Ali Habib counsel for Naveed and Sohail contended that the sentence of his clients was illegally enhanced by the military court. He said neither Sohail himself nor the state had filed appeal against his (Aamir Sohail) sentence.
He said the witness, Shazia, wife of Rana Naveed, was produced in favour of Naveed, however the sentence of Naveed was enhanced instead of acquitting him. He requested the court to accept the review petitions and restore the previous sentence of both the convicts. Earlier on March 31, the SC had rejected the review appeals of 10 convicts sentenced to death for their involvement in two attempts to assassinate former president Pervez Musharraf in 2003. The court, however, had sought and examined complete record produced by the Defense Ministry about the death sentence handed down by a military appellate court to Naveed and Sohail. The court had upheld its Sept 2006 decision rejecting the review petitions. The convicts, seven of them civilians, one army man and four air force personnel, had requested the court to reverse the verdict on the grounds that they had been awarded death sentence without any evidence.
The convicts whose review petitions were rejected included- Mushtaq, Rashid Qureshi, Ikhlas, Sarwar Bhatti, Zubair Ahmad (civilians), Arshad Mahmood (army), Khalid Mehmood, Nawazish Ali, Niaz Ahmad and Adnan (air force). Another accused Shazia Mubashir had been acquitted by an anti-terrorism court. Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf had narrowly escaped the attempts on his life one on Dec 14 and the other on Dec 25, 2003, in Rawalpindi.
