Pakistan court upholds Musharraf plot death sentences

ISLAMABAD, Sep 25 (Reuters) Pakistan's Supreme Court today upheld the death sentences handed down to 12 men convicted of taking part in two al Qaeda inspired assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf in December 2003.

General Musharraf described in his autobiography, published on the same day as the court dismissed the men's appeals, how the first attempt, a bomb planted beneath a bridge in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, caused his car to fly into the air.

When suicide truck bombs were driven into his convoy on the same road a few days later, the president's heavily damaged car made it through the carnage to reach his home, with blood on its bodywork.

Fourteen people were killed in the attack.

The convicted men, including soldiers and civilians, were sentenced to death by a military court, a decision later endorsed by the Lahore High Court, whose ruling the Supreme Court upheld today.

REUTERS BDP PM2259