Islamabad: Pakistan has stopped the hanging of a man convicted of murder as a teenager, an official said yesterday, following an outcry from rights groups after the country resumed executions in the wake of a Taliban massacre at an army school.
Shafqat Hussain, 23, was convicted of the 2004 murder of a seven-year-old boy when he was just 15-years-old and was working as a watchman in Karachi, Pakistan’s sprawling and violent port metropolis.
He was one of seven men on death row scheduled to be executed in the coming weeks after the government ended its moratorium on the death penalty in terrorism cases following the December attack on an army school in Peshawar that claimed 150 lives, most of them schoolchildren.
Rights groups and some members of parliament have campaigned in support of Hussain and yesterday Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar called off the execution that was scheduled for January 14 and ordered an inquiry.
“The minister of interior has ordered an inquiry into the case of Shafqat Hussain and stopped the execution,” a source at interior ministry said.
“Some NGOs and MPs had contacted the minister and apprised him that it as not a terrorism related case after which the minister ordered to stop the execution of Shafqat Hussain,” the official said.
Hussain was convicted by an anti-terrorism court — not in a juvenile court despite his age — and handed the death penalty.
The case went to appeal but Hussain’s age was not seen as any reason to overturn the sentence, despite the fact that the death penalty cannot be imposed on minors in Pakistan, according to Amnesty International.
AFP
