The government should immediately halt the execution of condemned prisoner Shafqat Hussain scheduled for March 19 and commute his sentence, Human Rights Watch said on Sunday.
Hussain was condemned to death in 2004 on charges of killing a seven-year-old boy in New Town. He was a security guard at the residential complex where the deceased lived. There were allegations that security forces had tortured Hussain into confessing to the crime.
An anti-terrorism court (ATC) reissued black warrants for Hussain on March 12 after receiving an intimation letter from jail authorities.
“Executing child offenders is a barbarous violation of basic decency and international law,” said Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director. “Sending someone to the gallows for an alleged crime committed as a child shows the government’s disregard for children’s rights.”
Hussain’s looming execution follows the government’s decision to rescind a four year unofficial death penalty moratorium for non-military personnel “in terrorism related cases” following the Taliban massacre of schoolchildren on December 16 last year.
On March 10, the government further lifted its death penalty moratorium for all capital crimes and instructed provincial governments to proceed with executions according to law.
“Pakistan’s president should immediately commute Shafqat Hussain’s execution and prevent a serious human rights violation,” Kine said. “Above all, Pakistan’s government should reaffirm its commitments to fundamental human rights and the rights of children by explicitly rejecting the odious practice of executing child offenders.”
Last execution of child offender
Human Rights Watch could last confirm Pakistan’s execution of an alleged child offender on June 13, 2006, when authorities in Peshawar hanged Mutabar Khan. A trial court in Swabi had sentenced Khan to death on October 6, 1998, for the alleged murder of five people in April 1996.
During his appeal, Khan provided the court with a school-leaving certificate to support his claim that he was 16 at the time of the killings, and contended that authorities knew he was a child because they held him in the juvenile wing of the Peshawar Central Prison for two years.
Since Khan’s execution, only five other places are known to have executed people for crimes committed as children: Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Hamas authorities in Gaza.
