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Bhutto suspects remanded
06/03/2008 12:29 - (SA)
Rawalpindi- Five suspected militants accused of involvement in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto were remanded in custody by a Pakistani anti-terrorist court on Thursday, court officials said.
Security was tight around the court in Rawalpindi, the garrison city where former premier Bhutto was killed in a suicide attack on December 27, as dozens of police rushed the accused men inside, an AFP correspondent said.
After proceedings lasting only a few minutes the judge sent Aitzaz Shah, Hasnain Gul, Abdul Rashid, Sher Zaman and Rafaqat - who goes by one name - to the city's Adiala Jail on judicial remand, a court official said.
"They are facing charges of involvement in Bhutto's murder and several other suicide attacks and bomb blasts in Rawalpindi," the official said on condition of anonymity.
They will next appear before the judge on March 10, he said, adding that the provincial government will decide whether the proceedings will be held in the district court or inside the heavily secured jail premises.
Police arrested Shah and Zaman from the troubled northwestern city of Dera Ismail Khan in January and the other three from Rawalpindi in February.
Gul and Rafaqat confessed in February to helping and providing shelter to the suicide attacker, identified as Bilal, to avenge the army's storming of a radical mosque in Islamabad in July that killed more than 100 people.
Pakistani police last week formally charged top Taliban and al-Qaeda commander Baitullah Mehsud, who is holed up in the country's tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, with masterminding her killing.
He remains at large and has denied any involvement.
President Pervez Musharraf and the US Central Intelligence Agency have also accused him of orchestrating the gun and suicide attack on the opposition leader at an election rally.
- AFP
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