Pakistan seeks life imprisonment for five Americans

Nov 29, 2010 |

Lahore

Tags:

A Pakistani court on Monday accepted a government request to seek life sentences for five Americans already jailed for 10 years on terror convictions.

The five young men were found guilty in the eastern city of Sargodha last June of waging war against the state and funding a terrorist group.

They have appealed, but no date has been set for a new hearing. Prosecutors are now demanding that the court toughen their sentences to life imprisonment.

Deputy public prosecutor Rana Bahktiar told AFP that he lodged the request with a two-judge panel on behalf of the Punjab provincial government.

"The court will now hear our petition simultaneously with the appeal filed by the five boys against their conviction," Mr Bakhtiar said.

Prosecutors believe the men planned to travel to neighbouring Afghanistan and join Taliban-led militants fighting US and Nato troops.

Investigators claim the Sargodha five planned to travel to South Waziristan, a training ground for Islamist militants in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt that was targeted by a major military operation in 2009.

The defendants — Umar Farooq, Waqar Hussain, Rami Zamzam, Ahmad Abdullah Mini and Amman Hassan Yammer — pleaded not guilty, saying they came to attend a wedding and wanted to go on to Afghanistan to do humanitarian work.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/44999" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-87c158b655c9269c1b3e61d3f69cbce2" value="form-87c158b655c9269c1b3e61d3f69cbce2" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="82100937" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>