Islamabad: Three Pakistan Air Force PAF personnel have been chargesheeted for negligence of duty during a terror attack on a key airbase that destroyed a surveillance aircraft.
The three personnel - senior aircraftman Shawaiz Khan, senior technician Zafar Abbas and Corporal Technician Mirza Waseem Iqbal, the supplier assistant of the No 3 Airborne Early Warning and Control Squadron at the Aeronautical Complex in Kamra airbase - were arrested for failing to provide security to aircraft destroyed in the attack.
The accused were technical staff and providing security to planes was not their responsibility, The Nation daily quoted its sources as saying today.
The personnel will face court-martial from November 11, the daily reported.
About nine militants, armed with automatic weapons, grenades and suicide vests, had attacked Minhas airbase at Kamra in Punjab on August 16 last year. A Saab 2000 Erieye surveillance aircraft was destroyed and a security personnel was killed before the attackers were gunned down.
The chargesheet against the three personnel was issued by a PAF Field General Court Martial in Kamra.
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan had claimed responsibility for the attack. Taliban spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan had then said, "We are proud of this operation. Our leadership had decided to attack Kamra base a long time ago."
The Taliban claimed aircraft from the base were being used to kill its fighters.
Ihsan dedicated the attack to Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, killed by US commandos in Abbottabad in 2011, and claimed the militants had destroyed three aircraft.
The airbase is located adjacent to the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, a key research and development centre. JF-17 fighter jets, jointly developed with China, are built at the facility.
A suicide bomber had killed eight persons in an attack on a check post outside the airbase in October 2009.
In December 2007, a suicide bomber targeted a PAF school bus and injured at least five children.
