Pakistan executes man who was a juvenile when arrested

According to The Dawn, Ansar Iqbal was arrested 16 years ago along with a friend.

Pakistan has executed a man who was “a child” at the time of his arrest, despite global appeals for clemency. “The body has been already handed over to the relatives for burial”. Iqbal said police framed him by planting two guns at his home.

“The law demands separate jails, special transportation vans, separate trial of juveniles and free legal aid to them, but these provisions are frequently violated”, along with the rights and dignity of the country’s 1,450 underage prisoners, he said after Hussain’s execution. The court failed to analyze Iqbal’s school records and birth certificate which give his age at 15 and 14 saying the files were submitted.

According to Reprieve, 73% of Pakistanis are not registered at birth which means it is “almost impossible to prove the age of most of the 8,000 prisoners on Pakistan’s death row”.

The hanging came a day after Maya Foa, an official with the rights group Reprieve, appealed on Pakistan not to execute Iqbal since he was a juvenile at the time of his arrest in 1994 on murder charges.

Hussain sentenced to death in 2004 for the kidnapping and murder of a seven-year-old boy who lived in a Karachi apartment building where Shafqat worked as a security guard.

Hussain’s counsel maintained that he had been a minor at the time of sentencing, following which the Federal Investigation Agency had been directed to investigate the case.

But very few of the 240 people hanged since had any links to militancy.

Many of those executed, like Iqbal, were convicted of murder.

A lot of the families say they were too poor to get great attorneys and falsely accused. Few, if any, wealthy convicts have been hanged.

“The government has therefore committed a shocking breach of Pakistani and worldwide law – and it is shameful that, when Iqbal’s life was at stake, the Supreme Court of Pakistan refused to consider critical evidence of juvenility”. Accusations of torture are not unusual.

Defence lawyers are sometimes unskilled, either failing to examine witnesses properly or not appearing in court for hearings.