A file photo of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. PHOTO: REUTERS
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Friday advised President Mamnoon Hussain to reject mercy pleas of five terrorists condemned to death by courts.
According to an official handout, these convicts are: Muhammad Ikram ul Haq alias Lahori alias Farooq Haider, Ahmed Ali alias Asif alias Sheesh Naag, Muhammad Tayyab alias Sajjad, Ghulam Shabbir alias Doctor alias Nasir alias Zeeshan alias Sohail, and Zulfiqar Ali.
Sources said these convicted criminals were involved in terrorist activities in Punjab and Sindh and have been in jails of these two provinces.
Under the procedure, the interior ministry sends mercy petitions to the president through the prime minister’s secretariat. The prime minister can send the president his recommendation, however it is the president’s discretion to accept or reject any such pleas.
The prime minister lifted a six-year moratorium on the death penalty following the December 16 bloody rampage by Taliban gunmen at the Army Public School in Peshawar that killed 150 people – most of them schoolchildren. Since then, seven convicted terrorists have been executed in Faisalabad and Peshawar jails.
In a related development, a division bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Friday stayed the execution of a prisoner condemned to death by an anti-terrorism court (ATC) in 2006 for killing a petty officer of the army, Lance Naik Tariq Mahmood, in Nankana Sahib.
The bench, while staying the execution till January 5, summoned the superintendent of the Faisalabad jail, who had obtained black warrants of Muhammad Faiz. It also sought an explanation from the ATC as to how the black warrant was issued while his appeal was pending before the Supreme Court.
On December 25, the ATC issued the black warrant on an application filed by the Faisalabad jail superintendent and fixed January 14 as the date for his execution. The LHC had upheld the sentence which was challenged by Faiz before the SC, which admitted the plea for hearing.
The LHC, Rawalpindi bench, dismissed the prosecution appeals against the acquittal of 10 accused in three high-profile terrorist attacks and upheld the decision of an ATC.
A two-judge bench – comprising Justice Ibadur Rehman Lodhi and Justice Qazi Amin Ahmed – on Friday dismissed the three appeals filed by the Punjab government against the acquittal of Dr Niaz Ahmed, Mazharul Haq, Shafiqur Rehman, Syed Abdul Saboor, Abdul Majid, Syed Abdul Basit, Mohammad Amir, Said Arab, Tahseen Ullah and Gul Roze.
The appeals had been pending for over four years. The prosecution had contended that the ATC had acquitted the accused without perusing testimonies of the prosecution witnesses. In April 2010, the ATC had acquitted these suspects after several hearings into the three high-profile cases - attacks on ISI’s Hamza camp, GHQ and PAF base in Kamra.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 3rd, 2015.
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