ISLAMABAD: Nearly 400 prisoners on death row, who have been languishing in jails for several years due to no decision about their fate by the Presidency, will now either be sent to the gallows or face life terms or will be set free.
“We have decided to send all these cases to President Asif Ali Zardari for decisions,” Federal Information Minister and chief official spokesman Senator Pervaiz Rashid said.
For years, all these cases are dumped at the Interior Ministry where they were sent by provincial home departments for decisions.
The ministry, under the previous government, had the instructions from the Presidency not to forward to it any such case, a source said.
The result is, he said, that these convicts are living an extremely miserable life. Besides, the jails are crowded with death row prisoners, leaving no capacity for the new inmates, who get similar punishment from the courts, he said.
These inmates have filed mercy petitions to the president of Pakistan, who can either order their execution or can convert their conviction into life terms or can free them straightaway. He takes decisions on case to case basis.
The tormenting wait for final decisions about their fate has led them to constantly live a nightmarish life. They don’t know whether they will be hanged, or their sentences would be converted into life terms or they would be simply freed. The delay is nerve-shattering and bone-chilling for them.
Appeals of these convicts filed even in the Supreme Court were turned down since long. The mercy petitions, submitted by them after these rejections, are awaiting disposal, and the decisions have to be taken by the president.
The information minister said that the courts were rightly displeased with dragging foot on hanging the criminals, who have been sentenced and who have exhausted the right of appeal long time ago. Internews
