A Pakistani Al-Qaeda-linked militant, sentenced to death this month over a 2006 suicide attack that killed a US diplomat, appealed on Tuesday against his sentence, his lawyer said. An anti-terrorism court convicted Anwar-ul-Haq for involvement in a bomb attack near the US consulate in Karachi in March 2006 that killed US diplomat David Foy and three other people on the eve of a visit to Pakistan by US President George W. Bush. The bomber was also killed. “We have filed an appeal in the Sindh High Court against the death sentence,” said lawyer Mohammad Farooq. Karachi is the capital of Sindh province. The appeal was filed on the grounds that there were “material contradictions” in witnesses' statements that led to the conviction, he said. “The most important thing is that the two witnesses which they produced, our contention is that they were planted witnesses,” he said. At the time of his arrest, police said Haq was a trained militant with links to Al-Qaeda and had fought against US forces in Afghanistan. Police said the blast, which wounded 49 people, was aimed at disrupting Bush's visit to Pakistan. The US president went ahead with his trip to the capital, Islamabad, as scheduled. __
