KARACHI:
Convicted political hitman, Saulat Ali Khan, aka Saulat Mirza, who was subjected to capital punishment for killing the head of a power utility, was consigned to his grave on Tuesday evening, according to local media sources.
Mirza, whose execution was delayed after he claimed in a video that Altaf Hussain, the chief of his former party Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) had ordered him to carry out the killing, wassent to gallows at a predawn hour Tuesday.
His funeral prayer were offered at a local mosque in Gulshan-e-Maymar area of the metropolis after sunset, while he was buried in Muhammad Shah graveyard located in New Karachi area of the metropolis. He left behind his widow and a son.
In 1999, Mirza was sentenced to death for the murder of the then managing director of the city’s state-owned electricity company two years earlier.
“Saulat Mirza was hanged at 4:30 am early morning today (2330 GMT Monday),” Sikandar Kakar, a senior official at Mach jail in southwestern Baluchistan province where Mirza was imprisoned, told AFP.
“A doctor examined his health just before the execution and declared him fully fit,” Kakar said, adding that the convict apologised to all jail inmates and staff for any offence he had caused before his hanging.
A senior official of the jails department Zia Tareen also confirmed the hanging.
Mirza was due to be hanged on March 19, but his execution was postponed several times on medical grounds after he appeared in a video making striking allegations against Karachi’s main party, MQM, for which he was an activist.
In the video he said the party chief Altaf Hussain — who has been in self-imposed exile in London since 1992 — had ordered him to carry out the murder.
“Altaf Hussain directed us through Babar Ghauri (a senior party leader) that the KESC (Karachi Electric Supply Company) MD has to be killed,” Mirza had said in the video, which was leaked to dozens of news channels.
It was not clear who shot or leaked the video.
Hussain strongly denied Mirza’s allegations in comments broadcast by all major TV channels.
The MQM, the most powerful political force in Pakistan’s biggest city of Karachi, stands accused by critics of running a violent mafia-like organisation, but the party strongly denies this and presents itself as a voice of political moderation and secularism.
The confessional video statement was the latest blow to MQM, whose headquarters were raided by paramilitary forces in March on an intelligence tip-off that convicted criminals were hiding inside.
The raid resulted in one death, the arrest of dozens of activists and the seizure of a cache of weapons.
Pakistan has executed over 100 convicted murderers after lifting a moratorium on capital punishment following the most bloody terrorist attack in the country’s violent history on a school in northwestern Peshawar city in December.
Human rights group Amnesty International estimates that Pakistan has more than 8,000 prisoners on death row, most of whom have exhausted their appeals.
His family should now avenge his death from Babar Ghauri and Altaf Hussein…..do the same to them.
Kudos to Pakistan for eliminating one more vermin.
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