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Hanged: Kingpin in attack at Lahore on Lankan cricket team
View(s):The suspected mastermind behind the bloody attack on the Sri Lankan national cricket team in the Pakistani city of Lahore in 2009 was hanged on Friday along with another terrorist suspect, foreign media reported.
Aqeel Ahmad alias Dr. Usman was captured at a location in Lahore in October 2009 after he was injured while trying to blow himself up, the reports said.
The other person to be hanged was Arshad Mehmood alias Meharban for his role in the attempted assassination bid on former Pakistan Prime Minister Pervez Musharraf in 2003.
The pair was hanged at the Faisalabad Jail at around 9 p.m. and the executions were the first to take place after the Pakistan government ended a moratorium on the death penalty in the wake of a Taliban school massacre that killed 148 students and staff in Peshawar on Tuesday this week.
Dr. Usman, a former soldier of the Army Medical Corps was also involved in the attack on the Pakistan Army Headquarters in Rawalpindi in 2009 and was an active member of the banned organisation, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
He was also involved in the February 2008 assassination of Pakistani Lt-Gen Mushtaq Ahmed Baig of the Army Medical Corps and in the Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing in September 2008.
At least nine national cricketers were injured in the bus attack a short distance away from the Lahore Stadium. (LB)