Five Navy officers have been awarded death sentence for involvement in September 6, 2014, Karachi Naval Dockyard attack case.
The sentence has been given by A Navy tribunal, father of one of the convicts said the other day.
Retired Major Saeed Ahmed told media that in a trial his son, Sub-Lieutenant Hammad Ahmed, and four other naval officers had been convicted of the naval dockyard attack that took place on Defence Day around two years ago.
He said the five were charged with having links with the militant Daesh group, mutiny, hatching a conspiracy and carrying weapons in the dockyard.
However, according to media reports, the attackers were allegedly planning to hijack the warship PNS Zulfiqar to use it in an attack on one of the US navy’s refuel ships. Two militants were killed and four others were apprehended by security personnel.
Saeed said that the naval authorities did not provide his son the right to a fair trial.
“I was waiting for the commencement of the trial when someone recently informed me that my son had been shifted to the Karachi central prison,” said Saeed.
The retired army officer came to know about the conclusion of the trial and capital punishment when he went to Karachi and met his son and his four colleagues — Irfanullah, Muhammad Hammad, Arsalan Nazeer and Hashim Naseer — in prison.
He said that naval authorities did not provide him copies of the proceedings of the trial when he approached them for the same.
The convict’s father said that he would file an appeal against the judgement of the naval court of appeal.
He said the five officers had been in the navy for only four to five years and they were not capable of seizing a warship and using it for a banned outfit.
In July 2015, the naval authorities informed the Islamabad High Court (IHC) that a ‘missing’ sub-lieutenant, Hafiz Ehsanullah Sajjad, was in their custody in connection with the naval dockyard attack case.
Safia Ismail, the wife of the ‘missing’ officer, had filed a petition before the IHC stating that her husband was detained by the navy without any charge. She said that he was taken away from his residence in Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Karachi, by “some people in plain clothes on the evening of Sept 6, 2014”.
She said that her father, who was also a retired Navy officer, had tried to ascertain his whereabouts but to no avail.