A Pakistani judge has ruled that the trial of a doctor alleged to have harboured al-Qaeda suspects must go ahead – despite a government plea for a postponement. Dr Ahmed Javed Khawaja and his brother, Ahmed Naveed Khawaja, are accused of sheltering wanted al-Qaeda men in a residential compound near Lahore. The prosecution had applied for a postponement because it feared the trial would cause ”a serious law and order situation”. But the judge said the plea was ”without merit”. Anti-terrorism judge Mehmood Maqbool Bajwa agreed with defence counsel Pervaiz Inayat Malik that the prosecution’s plea was not in line with the provisions of the anti-terrorism law, which is aimed at speedy trials. In an eleven-page order, the judge rejected special public prosecutor Rana Bakhtiar Ali’s appeal as ”legally not competent and otherwise without merit”. Full Story