Pakistan hanged nine death
row convicts on Wednesday, media said, as the mother of a man
charged as a child with murder and due to be hanged this week
begged the president for mercy.
Wednesday's hangings bring the number of executions in the
past two days to 21, and to 48 since an unofficial moratorium on
capital punishment was lifted in December. Twelve were executed
on Tuesday.
However, the Interior Ministry said it did not know how many
people had been executed in total.
"The ministry does not have consolidated data after the
lifting of the moratorium as new cases include all types,
including terrorism," a spokesman said in a text message.
The death sentence cannot be used against a defendant under
the age of 18 when the crime was committed. Testimony obtained
by torture is also inadmissible.
Yet lawyers for Shafqat Hussain say he was just 14 in 2004
when he was tortured into confessing to the killing of a child.
He is due to be hanged on Thursday.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lifted the moratorium on Dec.
17, a day after Pakistani Taliban gunmen attacked a school and
killed 134 students and 19 adults. The killings put pressure on
the government to do more to tackle the Islamist insurgency.
At first, the government said only militants would be
executed. But last week it emerged that officials had quietly
widened the policy for all prisoners on death row whose appeals
had been rejected.
Shafqat Hussain's mother appealed to President Mamnoon
Hussain to commute the death sentence to life in prison.
"I beg for new life for my son," the Express Tribune quoted
Makhani Begum, 65, as saying.
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had promised an
investigation into Shafqat Hussain's age, but his lawyers say
neither they nor the family were contacted.
"It's just a sham. There was no inquiry conducted at all,"
said Shahab Siddiqui from Justice Project Pakistan, the legal
aid group representing Hussain.
Human rights groups say convictions in Pakistan are highly
unreliable because its antiquated criminal justice system barely
functions, torture is common and police are mostly untrained.
REUTERS