Pakistan executes man who killed child as minor

Pakistan executed a young man whose case touched off an global outcry amid claims he was tortured into a murder confession and convicted as a juvenile.

Pakistani authorities on Tuesday hanged a prison inmate whose family claimed was only 14 years old when convicted on murder charges a decade ago, officials said.

Pakistani law does not allow the execution of people arrested when under 18 but officials insisted he was an adult at the time.

“It is too late to save Shafqat Hussain’s life, but there are still thousands of others on death row in Pakistan who are at risk”.

Addressing a Police Darbar of four districts of Rawalpindi region here at Police Lines, he said, there is no enmity with MQM however, Altaf Hussain’s matter is legal and not political.

In his August 1 address to party workers in the US city of Dallas, the MQM chief urged them to hold sit-ins outside the White House and UN and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation offices to seek deployment of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation troops in Karachi. His brother, Manzore Hussain, said that he had only managed to visit Hussain in jail once, in 2010.

Local and worldwide human rights groups have criticized Islamabad over the issue. Those scars are nonetheless there.

Pakistan has hanged nearly 200 individuals since December, when a bloodbath by the Taliban at an army-run faculty in Peshawar prompted the federal government to carry a de facto ban on capital punishment. He was convicted under the Anti-Terrorism Act of Pakistan despite no known links to any terrorist organisation.

The BBC’s Matthew Amroliwala speaks to Sultana Noon, Pakistan Researcher at Amnesty global, who has condemned the execution.

“[Mr Hussain] faced a catalogue of injustice, sentenced to death while still a child after being tortured by the police until he produced a so-called confession”, she said.

The European Union last week voiced serious concerns about the “alarming pace” of executions, warning that a prized trade status granted to Pakistan could be threatened if it breached global conventions on fair trials, child rights and preventing torture.

Dr. Nazir S Bhatti demanded government of Pakistan to make public true and signed document of “Liaquat-Nehru Pact of 1950” that people of Pakistan may note importance of speech of MQM Chief Altaf Hussain which is under severe criticism by media and illiterate politicians.