INDIA: Three men were sentenced to death yesterday for helping to plan last year's suicide attack on India's parliament.
The attack almost triggered war with nuclear rival Pakistan.
Special judge Mr S. N. Dhingra sentenced Mohammed Afzal, a fruit merchant, Shaukat Hussain Guru, a former Delhi university student and S. A. R. Geelani, a college lecturer, to hang, after finding them guilty of waging war against India, under a new anti-terrorism law. The last hanging in India took place over a year ago.
All three, who had pleaded innocence, were also fined 1.3 million rupees (€26,348), a portion of which would be paid to the families of the security personnel killed in the assault on parliament's complex on December 13th, 2002, the judge said.
Guru's wife Afsan, who was found guilty of not disclosing information to police, burst into tears after being sentenced to five years imprisonment and fined 10,000 rupees (€203).
The three men, who did not take part in the attack in which five Pakistan-backed Muslim gunmen shot dead nine people before being killed by the security forces, will now appeal against their sentences in the High Court, the Supreme Court and eventually to the President for clemency in a process likely to last at least two years.
"If asking for liberation for Kashmir is terrorism, then I'm a terrorist," Guru told the court before he was led away, sobbing. I'll be happy to die for the cause of Kashmir, he added referring to the 13-year-old civil war for an independent Muslim homeland in the northern, disputed principality that is also claimed by neighbouring Pakistan.
"You can't expect justice," said Geelani, adding that he had been framed. Afzal, the other defendant, said they never expected justice from the court and its decision was a "nexus between the politicians and police".
