Pakistan poised to execute paraplegic prisoner
AFP
November 25, 2015, 5:50 am
Islamabad (AFP) - The family of a disabled Pakistani murder convict set to be executed Wednesday said they were "praying for a miracle" as rights activists slammed Islamabad for a hangings spree on track to see 300 deaths in under a year.
Pakistan is "shamefully sealing its place among the world's worst executioners", Amnesty International said Tuesday, ahead of of the scheduled hanging of Abdul Basit, a paraplegic who was convicted of murder in 2009.
His execution has already been postponed several times after rights groups raised concerns about how a wheelchair-bound man would mount the scaffold. Prison officials and his family confirmed that it has been rescheduled for early Wednesday.
His sister, Asma Mazhar, said she and her mother had gone to see him on Tuesday for the last time.
"We found him helpless and quiet," she told AFP. "He has less hope of surviving the execution order a third time."
She said he told them that authorities had come to measure his body and that it was an "awful moment".
"We are praying for a miracle," she said, adding that she wanted to appeal to the president to spare her brother.
Pakistan's Human Rights Commission said it has written to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif seeking to stay the execution, adding that prison authorities were still awaiting an answer from the government on how to proceed with the hanging.
In a statement Tuesday, Amnesty said it had recorded 299 executions in Pakistan since the death penalty was controversially reinstated following a Taliban mass killing at a school in Peshawar last December.
"Pakistan will imminently have executed 300 people since it lifted a moratorium on executions, shamefully sealing its place among the world's worst executioners," the statement said.
Forty-five people were executed in October alone, Amnesty said, making it the deadliest month since the moratorium was lifted.
No official figures are available. The rights group Reprieve told AFP Tuesday that by its tally the number of executions has just passed 300, while other local activists said the figure was below 260.
"Pakistan's ongoing zeal for executions is an affront to human rights and the global trend against the death penalty," David Griffiths, Amnesty's South Asia research director, said in a statement.
"Even if the authorities stay the execution of Abdul Basit, a man with paraplegia, Pakistan is still executing people at a rate of almost one a day."
- Rights fears -
Pakistan ended a six-year moratorium on the death penalty last year as part of a terror crackdown after Taliban militants gunned down more than 150 people, most of them children, at an army-run school in the restive northwest.
The massacre shocked and outraged a country already scarred by nearly a decade of extremist attacks.
Hangings were initially reinstated only for those convicted of terrorism, but in March they were extended to all capital offences.
Supporters argue that executions are the only effective way to deal with the scourge of militancy in the country.
But critics say the legal system is unjust, with rampant police torture and poor representation for victims during unfair trials, while the majority of those who are hanged are not convicted of terror charges.
There is no evidence the "relentless" executions have done anything to counter extremism in the country, Griffiths said in the Amnesty statement.
Recent research by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies also suggests that death is no deterrent for militants who are "committed to dying for their cause".
The Amnesty figures suggest Pakistan is on track to become one of the world's top executioners in 2015.
In 2014 607 people were put to death in 22 countries, according to Amnesty, though that figure does not include China, where the number of executions is believed to be in the hundreds but is considered by authorities to be a state secret.
