Seven more convicted terrorist will be executed in January after an anti terrorism court (ATC) issued black warrants for the condemned Saturday.
These terrorists will be sent to gallows on January 13, 14 and 15 as part of a government counterstrike following Peshawar school massacre, which claimed 149 lives in the country’s deadliest terror attack.
According to details, the noose around the neck of al Qaeda’s Zulfiqar Ali will tighten on January 13 in Rawalpindi. He was convicted for shooting dead a number of cops outside American Consulate in Karachi.
Convicted sectarian target-killers Talha Hassan, Khaleel Ahmed, Shahid Haneef, Shafqat, and Saeed Ahmed will get the hempen necktie in Karachi and Sukkur jails.
Furthermore Behram Khan, who had gunned down a lawyer in his chamber and Shafqat Hussain, the cold-blooded murderer of a minor, will meet the hangman’s halter on January 13 and 14.
Hussain was 15 when he was sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of a seven-year-old boy in 2004, officials said.
“The courts have issued death warrants for seven convicts,” the prison department home secretary in southern Sindh province Nawaz Shaikh told media.
“Prisoners Shahid Hanif and Khalil Ahmed convicted for killing government official on sectarian grounds, Zulfiqar Ali for killing 22 policemen deputed at the US Consulate in Karachi and Behram Khan for killing a young lawyer will be hanged on January 13, while Shahfaq Hussain will be executed for killing a child on January 14,” Shaikh said.
“Two others, Talha and Saeed, will be given capital punishment for sectarian killings on January 15,” he added.
Pakistan on Wednesday December 31, 2014 hanged a man convicted of attempting to assassinate former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, the seventh execution since the country lifted a moratorium on capital punishment after its bloodiest-ever terror attack.
“Niaz Mohammad, 40, was executed today and his body was handed over to relatives,” an official at Peshawar’s high-security Central Jail said.
Earlier last month, Pakistan lifted a six-year moratorium on the death penalty in terror cases, a decision that came amid public outrage over a Taliban massacre at a school in the northwestern city of Peshawar which killed 150 people, including 134 children.
Of the seven people hanged so far, six were involved in the failed attempt to assassinate Musharraf in Rawalpindi in 2003, while one was involved in a 2009 attack on the army headquarters.
Pakistani officials have said they plan to hang 500 convicts in the coming weeks, drawing protest from international human rights campaigners.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has also announced the establishment of military courts for terror-related cases in order to accelerate trials, describing them as “an extraordinary solution to an extraordinary problem.”
Despite the moratorium, which began in 2008, courts continued to issue death sentences and Amnesty International estimates there are around 8,000 people on death row in Pakistan. (Agencies)
