An anti-terrorism court (ATC) issued fresh death warrants for two convicts who will now be hanged on March 17.
The judge of ATC-IV issued black warrants for both condemned prisoners – Mohammad Faisal and Mohammad Afzal – and asked jail authorities to execute them in the early hours of March 17 under the supervision of a judicial magistrate after fulfilling legal formalities.
Faisal and Afzal were sentenced to death by an ATC in 1999 for the killing of Abdul Jabbar during a house robbery in Korangi.
Jail authorities had argued that appeals of both prisoners had been turned down by the superior judiciary, while a mercy petition was also dismissed by President Mamnoon Hussain on February 17.
The ATC approved the jail authorities’ demand, and issued Faisal’s and Afzal’s death warrants a couple of days later, on February 23. They were to be hanged on March 5, 2015, but the two convicts filed a compromise petition with the Sindh High Court (SHC), claiming that their executions could not be carried out because the legal heirs of the deceased had pardoned them.
The SHC, while suspending the black warrants, had allowed the convicts to file a compromise application with the trial court. But on Friday, March 6, 2015, the ATC dismissed their compromise application as not being maintainable.
