Sukkur prison ready to hang two prisoners on Tuesday

The jail administration have asked the armed forces to manage prison security in the days leading up to the execution.

SUKKUR/ HYDERABAD:

The jail administration at Central Prison, Sukkur, is ready to hang two terrorists on December 23.

They have asked the armed forces to manage prison security in the days leading up to the execution, and they have called a hangman from Sanghar prison as there is none available in Sukkur.

The death warrants of two terrorists, currently in Sukkur jail, were issued on Friday evening. The convicts - Attaullah aka Qasim, son of Muhammad Hashim, and Muhammad Azam aka Sharif, son of Jan Muhammad - belong to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. They will be executed in the early hours of Tuesday. Both the terrorists were involved in murders and bomb blasts, and had FIRs under sections 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code and section seven of the Anti-Terrorism Act registered against them at Soldier Bazaar Police Station in Karachi.

The Sukkur jail was established in 1944 and has had 237 hangings until 2007 when the moratorium on capital punishment came into force. A resident of Farid Malik village in Ghotki, Shahzado, son of Nabi Bux, was the last prisoner to be hanged in Sukkur in June, 2007. According to jail superintendent Shahid Hussain Chijro, there are 95 prisoners on death row, out of which the mercy petitions of 91 prisoners are pending at different stages. Apart from Attaullah and Azam, the mercy petitions of two ordinary prisoners, Hafiz Jaleel Morejo and Abdul Razzaq, were rejected but their death warrants have yet to be issued.



Jail superintendent to execute in Hyd

The last executioner in Hyderabad has retired and the jail authorities have yet to hire his replacement so it is likely that the jail superintendent himself will be carrying out the executions of the three prisoners waiting for their black warrants.

“Technically, the hanging has to be carried out by the hangman in the presence of the board,” a jail official told The Express Tribune. “But since the central prison does not have one, the jail superintendent is empowered to do the execution.”

He cited a precedence of 1997 when major Arshad Jameel was hanged by the then superintendent Abdul Haee. Jameel was convicted of killing several people in a case pertaining to the illegal occupation of agricultural land in Hyderabad.

The gallows have, however, been repaired and the jail authorities are ready to carry out the executions as soon as the black warrants are issued. The last hanging to take place in Hyderabad Central Jail was on January 17, 2007, when Muhammad Sharif Chishti, a triple murder convict, was executed.

Now after eight years, at least three inmates of the 19th century Central Jail, Hyderabad, are waiting for their black warrants. These inmates are Sabir Baloch and Shahsawar Baloch, the two convicts of the May 1998 PIA plane hijacking case, and Saleem Francis Maseeh, who was sentenced to death in a rape and murder case in June 2011. These inmates had filed mercy petitions in the presidency but their pleas were dismissed, according to jail officials.

Jail officials said that three wards, Al-Mansur Ward, Security Ward 3 and Ward 5, have been prepared to keep those inmates whose black warrants will be issued. There are a total of 191 inmates convicted with death penalty but an overwhelming number of them have their appeals pending in the Sindh High Court and the Supreme Court. Around 30 of them are aged over 60 years. The armed forces took control of the prison’s internal security on Thursday. The Frontier Constabulary, Rangers and police are also deployed.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 21^st, 2014.