Karachi bombing accused acquitted

Mr Sohail was arrested in 2005

A Pakistani court has acquitted a man sentenced to death in the June 2002 Sheraton hotel bombing which killed 11 French engineers in Karachi.

Mohammad Sohail was acquitted due to "a lack of evidence", the court ruled.

The prosecution said they would appeal against the order. Mr Sohail was arrested in 2005.

Officials say he is unlikely to be released from jail as he is also charged in the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Mr Sohail was sentenced to death in absentia in 2003 after being found guilty of involvement in the Sheraton hotel attack, which also killed three Pakistanis.

Officials say he belongs to the banned militant group Harkat Jihad-ul-Islami.

'Appeal'

"The accused has been acquitted due to a lack of substantial evidence on the part of the prosecution," news agency AFP quoted defence lawyer Ovais Jamal as saying.

"The court [has] heard arguments from both sides and hereby acquits the accused as the prosecution does not provide any substantial evidence against him," the agency quoted Judge Abdul Ghafoor Memon as saying in his order.

The government of the southern Pakistani province of Sindh said it would appeal against the verdict.

"We'll challenge the decision in the high court soon," Yousuf Laghari, the top judicial official in the provincial government, told AFP.

Mr Sohail was one of three men sentenced to death in the Sheraton case.

He was arrested during a shoot-out with police in Karachi in 2005.

The authorities blame Harkat Jihad-ul-Islami for several bomb attacks in Pakistan in recent years, including the 2002 attack outside the Karachi Sheraton and a failed attack on the former president Pervez Musharraf in the northern city of Rawalpindi in December 2003.

Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi in January 2002 and later beheaded.