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Pakistani police on Tuesday charged a military man, assigned to the security entourage protecting President Pervez Musharraf, with attempting to assassinate the Pakistani president.
According to the police charge sheet, Inspector Wasim Akhtar of the paramilitary Rangers was part of the conspiracy to kill Musharraf on April 26.
Akhtar's job in the plot was to inform his accomplices about Musharraf's movements, the police said.
A small truck laden with 227 kgs of explosives was parked about one km from the airport on Karachi's Shahr-e-Faisl Road on April 26.
When Musharraf's cavalcade started for Karachi city, Akhtar telephoned his associates, who waited for the entourage and hit the remote detonator as it passed by. The detonator failed to work, sabotaging the assassination plan, the police said.
The police said the miscreants later retrieved the explosives laden vehicle and used it nearly two months later for the June 14 attack on the US consulate in Karachi, in which at least 12 Pakistani were killed and more than 50 injured.
Two of Akhtar's alleged accomplices -- Mohammed Hanif and Mohammed Imran -- have been charged in connection with that bombing as well as with attempted murder in the failed assassination.
All the three men are members of Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen al-Almi, a splinter group of Harkat-ul- Mujahedeen, an Al Qaeda-affiliated extremist group.
Agencies
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