Pakistan on Friday sought to assuage Iranian "anxiety", after the Supreme Court overturned death sentences given to eight men for the alleged murder of an Iranian diplomat and seven others.
"We understand the concern and anxiety of the Iranian government that those responsible for the heinous crime of assassination should be punished," foreign office spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan told reporters.
While the decision was very clear the "legal avenues and process has not yet been exhausted on this matter," he said.
When asked whether the government would file a petition seeking a review of the Supreme Court ruling, he refused to say what the next move could be.
The top court on Monday overturned the death sentences, saying the prosecution "failed to produce trustworthy evidence" against the appellants.
On Wednesday, Pakistan's ambassador in Tehran, Javid Hossen, was summoned to the foreign ministry and informed of Iran's objection to the ruling.
Iranian daily Khorassan demanded Tehran review its relations with its neighbour, saying the fact that the accused were found innocent after having earlier been sentenced to death "is unacceptable to public opinion."
Syed Muhammad Ali Rahimi, director of the Iranian Culture Center in the central Pakistani city of Multan, was gunned down along with seven others in February 1997.
Police arrested 16 people who were sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court in December 1998. The Lahore High Court in March 1999 upheld the convictions of eight.
Several other Iranians have been killed in Pakistan during the past decade, including six Iranian airforce cadets who were shot in an ambush in Rawalpindi in 1998.
The attacks have been linked by police to sectarian tension between religious militants from the country's majority Sunni and minority Shiite Muslim communities – ISLAMABAD (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
