Appeal filed over Danish embassy bombing suspects

Appeal filed in Rawalpindi court against acquittal of 3 men over a deadly suicide bombing near the Danish embassy.

RAWALPINDI: Pakistan has appealed the acquittal of three men over a deadly suicide car bombing near the Danish embassy in Islamabad two years ago, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The appeal was filed in a high court in Rawalpindi, senior prosecutor Mohammad Tayyab told AFP.

A trial court in Rawalpindi last month acquitted the trio, ruling that the prosecution had failed to prove the charges against them. Six people were killed, including a Dane, when a car bomb exploded outside the embassy in June 2008 amid anger in the Muslim world over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) first printed in Danish newspapers in 2005.

About 27 people were wounded. The bomb damaged the mission, the residences of the Indian and Dutch ambassadors, and almost destroyed a nearby UN agency.

No one has been sentenced to death over any militant bombing in Pakistan and suspects in high-profile terror plots are frequently acquitted by the courts, which cite lack of evidence.

"The hearing is likely to be held in Lahore when the dates will be fixed by the honourable court," Tayyab said.

The appeal was submitted on Tuesday. The prosecution has called for the evidence to be reappraised, he said. "We believe that the evidence produced in the court was sufficient for conviction," Tayyab said.

The prosecution had produced 32 witnesses in court, two of whom testified that they saw suspects Qari Ilyas and Shamsul Haq signalling the suicide attacker towards the target as they sat in a car, he said. The conspiracy was allegedly hatched in the Rawalpindi house of the third accused, Rao Shaukat.

They are the only suspects to have been tried over the attack, Tayyab said. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack in a video which named the suicide bomber as Abu Gharib al-Makki Kamal Salim Attiya al-Fudli al-Hadhli.

Militant bombers have killed more than 3,700 people and fanned instability across Pakistan since July 2007. In May, a Pakistani court freed four men put on trial over the 2008 bombing of the five-star Marriott hotel in Islamabad that killed at least 60 people.