Islamabad: Abdul Basit, a paraplegic who developed tubercular (TB) meningitis while on death row, and was convicted of murder in 2009, is scheduled for execution tomorrow (Nov 25).
Amnesty International claims it has recorded 299 executions since the death penalty was controversially reinstated following a Taliban mass killing at a school in Peshawar last year that was the country’s deadliest ever extremist attack.
Basit’s hanging has already been postponed several times after rights groups raised concerns about how a wheelchair-bound man would mount the scaffold.
Amnesty International slammed Islamabad Tuesday for “shamefully sealing its place among the world’s worst executioners.”
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.
“Pakistan’s ongoing zeal for executions is an affront to human rights and the global trend against the death penalty,” David Griffiths, the group’s South Asia research director, said in the 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.”
There was no evidence the “relentless” executions have done anything to counter extremism in the country, he added.
The rights group also alleged that many of the executions come after court proceedings that “do not meet international fair trial standards”.
Pakistan ended a six-year moratorium on the death penalty last year as part of a crackdown after Taliban militants gunned down more than 150 people, most of them children, at an army-run school in Peshawar.
The attack shocked and outraged a country already scarred by nearly a decade of extremism.
Hangings were initially reinstated only for those convicted of terrorism, but in March they were extended to all capital offences.
The Human Right Commission of Pakistan puts the number of executions in the country since the lifting of moratorium at 295 . Out if the total executions 288 people were executed this year,according to HRCP.
