A Pakistani court has acquitted four men who had been charged with helping a Pakistani-American man orchestrate a failed terrorist attack in New York's Times Square

The four were arrested in the wake of Faisal Shahzad's May 2010 attempt, when the explosives packed into his vehicle produced smoke but no blast. Shahzad, 33, has pleaded guilty and admitted to getting training from the Pakistani Taliban in the country's tribal region along the Afghan border. He was sentenced to life in prison in the United States in October 2010. The attempted attack increased tension between Pakistan and the United States, which has long accused Islamabad of not doing enough to crack down on Islamic terrorists on its soil who pose a threat to the West. That tension came to a near braking point when U.S. forces tracked down and killed the September 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, who had been living in an upscale suburb of Islamabad. Even though the men acquitted had been in custody for two years, very few details had emerged about their trial in an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi, next to the capital Islamabad. Such trials rarely produce convictions in Pakistan because police often lack basic investigative skills, prosecutors lack training in terror cases and judges and witnesses are often subject to intimidation. One of the men released, Muhammad Shoaib Mughal, had been charged with bankrolling the terrorist attack, according to his lawyer, Malik Imran Safdar. The other three suspects, Humbal Akhtar, Muhammad Shahid Husain and Faisal Abbasi, were charged as Mughal's accomplices, said Safdar.