A Pakistani soldier convicted of taking part in a failed attempt to assassinate the country's president was hanged on Saturday, officials said.
Islam Sadiqqui was among several soldiers arrested after alleged al-Qaeda operatives and domestic militants -- including army officers -- tried to blow up President General Pervez Musharraf's motorcade as it was traveling near Islamabad on Dec. 14, 2003.
No one was hurt in the attack. But on Dec. 25, at least 16 people -- mostly the president's police guards -- were killed and several others wounded when suicide bombers tried to ram two explosive-laden vehicles into the president's limousine.
Musharraf also survived the second attack.
Sadiqqui is the first person to be hanged in connection with the plots to kill Musharraf.
Pakistan army spokesman General Shaukat Sultan said Sadiqqui was sentenced to death last year by a military court which found him guilty of conspiring to kill Musharraf. He said the soldier submitted an appeal for mercy to the president which was rejected.
Sultan refused to give any other details and would not say how many soldiers or air force personnel have been convicted. Previously, authorities said about 12 soldiers and air force personnel were facing courts martial in connection with the assassination attempts.
Months after the attacks, Musharraf announced that some junior army and air force personnel, domestic militants and senior al-Qaeda leader Abu Farraj al-Libbi were involved in the attempts to kill him for helping the US in its war against terrorism.
Al-Libbi, who has been described by US and Pakistani officials as al-Qaeda's No. 3 leader after Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, was arrested in May in a town in northwestern Pakistan and later handed over to US authorities.
On Friday, authorities informed Sadiqqui's family that he would be hanged before dawn on Saturday at a jail in the central city of Multan. Sadiqqui's body was handed over to his father, Abdul Karim, on Saturday, said a prison official who spoke on condition of anonymity according to prison policy.
Karim took his son's body for burial to Jaccobabad, a town in Pakistan's southern Sindh province where US troops have been using an army base since December 2001, when coalition forces launched attacks on Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime for sheltering Osama bin Laden and other members of his al-Qaeda network.
RSS