RAWALPINDI/MIANWALI:
Three death row prisoners, including two brothers, were executed in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail on Thursday while another was hanged to death in Mianwali jail. All convicts had been awarded the death sentence in non-terror related cases.
Prisoners sent to the gallows in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail also included two brothers, Mohammad Asghar and Ghulam Mohammad, who had been awarded the death penalty by a district and sessions judge for killing two of their relatives within the remit of Gujar Khan’s Jatli police station in 1996.
The third executed prisoner, Gulistan Zaman, had also been condemned to death by a district and sessions judge in a murder case. He was convicted for killing a man in 1998 in Kallar Syedan.
Another death row convict, Abdul Sattar, was executed in Mianwali Jail. Sattar was sentenced to death for killing a man over a personal feud in 1992.
The appeals of all convicts had been rejected by higher and superior courts and their mercy petitions were also rejected by President of Pakistan.
With the recent hangings, so far 54 convicts have been hanged across the country, after the deadly attack on the Army Public School on December 16, 2014.
The ruling PML-N government had lifted the moratorium on the death penalty in terrorism related cases in the wake of a Taliban attack at the APS Peshawar, which claimed 141 lives, most of them children.
The United Nations, the European Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have urged the government to re-impose the moratorium on the death penalty.
Some 8,000 convicted prisoners are in a death row in various jails across the country.