LAHORE-
Two more convicts were executed Thursday in Lahore and Karachi jails, private media reported.
The latest hangings pushed to 18 the number of executions carried out since Pakistan lifted a six-year moratorium on the death penalty in December.
Convict Zahid Ali was executed in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail. He was awarded death sentence by an anti-terrorism court in 2004 for killing a policeman in Multan in 2002.
Muhammad Saeed Awan, a member of the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militant group which is linked to Al Qaeda, was hanged at Karachi’s Central Jail.
Awan was convicted of shooting to death police officer Sadiq Hussain Shah and his son, Abid Hussain Shah, in 2001.
Strict security arrangements were made outside the two jails in the run up to the executions.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lifted the ban on capital punishment hours after December 16’s brutal Taliban attack at army-run school in Peshawar that left almost 150 people dead, mostly schoolchildren.
Officials have said they plan to hang 500 convicts in the coming weeks.
The United Nations, European Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on Pakistan to re-impose its moratorium on the death penalty, which ran from 2008 until December 2014.
Rights campaigners say Pakistan overuses its anti-terror laws and courts to prosecute ordinary crimes.
There are also concerns that death row convicts from non-terror related cases could be executed.
A court in the northern city of Rawalpindi on Wednesday overturned a stay order preventing the execution of convicted murderer Shoaib Sarwar, a spokesman for the firm representing him said.
Sarwar was convicted of murder in 1998 while he was still a juvenile, Shahab Siddiqui of the Justice Project Pakistan said, adding he had acted in his own defence and that of his sister.
The court’s decision to overturn his stay order now means a “black warrant” for his execution can be issued at any time and carried out within 24 hours.
PM Sharif has also announced the establishment of military courts to try hardened terrorists in order to accelerate trials, describing them as “an extraordinary solution to an extraordinary problem.”
Following three all parties conferences in two weeks, Pakistan’s lawmakers amended the Constitution to legalize the military courts which were outlawed by Supreme Court years before.
