Convict's mother appeals to President

Zahoor Mai, mother of 22-year-old Zubair Ahmed, has appealed to President General Pervez Musharraf for acceptance of the mercy petition and commutation of sentence because her son is innocent.
Zahoor Mai (45) told newsmen in Mohallah Islamabad of Kehror Pucca (Lodhran), that her son, Zubair Ahmed was jobless and he went to Rawalpindi to earn livelihood for the family but he disappeared, and now it came to her knowledge that he was sentenced to death on the charge of plotting to kill President Pervez Musharraf.
His brother Muhammad Tariq said: "My brother Zubair Ahmed was arrested on January 9,2004 and he was kept at secret places for one year and seven months. However, a message was received in April 2005 from the GHQ that he was being tried in a military court. I am confident that he is innocent, because he was neither an opponent of General Pervez Musharraf nor disliked military regime nor he had any link with any sectarian or militant organisation."
Tariq appealed to the Amnesty International and Human Rights organisations to raise this issue internationally to press the authorities for the trial of Zubair in a civil court.
Zahoor Mai also appealed to authorities to allow her to see her son, who has been languishing in solitary confinement for one-and-a half year.
Naik Arshad Mehmood and his civilian associates Zubair Ahmad, Rashid Qureshi, Ghulam Sarwar and Ikhlas Ahmad, who were given death sentence, have been sent to Attock jail.
Commando Arshad, son of Meharban, a resident of Rawalpindi, was in the Special Services Group (SSG) of the Army. Others (who were convicted and awarded death sentence) were: Zubair Ahmad, son of Allah Ditta, a resident of Kehror Pucca town of Lodhran district of south Punjab; Rashid Qureshi, son of Anwar Qureshi Pandora, Rawalpindi; Ghulam Sarwar, son of Safdar Bhatti, Rawalpindi; and Ikhlas Muhammad, son of Akhlaq Ahmad, a resident of Poonch district of Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
Ameer Suhail Sajid, son of Wali Muhammad, who has been sentenced to 20 years rigorous imprisonment, hails from Mandi Bahauddin; Rana Naveed, son of Rana Faqir Hussain, who has been sentenced to 25 years imprisonment, belongs to Islamabad, while Adnan Khan, son of Gilaap Khan Afridi, who has been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, is a resident of Jamrud, Peshawar.