UK's drugs aid puts Britons at risk of execution in Pakistan

LONDON: A number of British citizens could be executed in Pakistan as a result of the British government’s overseas funding for operations against drug-smuggling in the country, The Independent reported on Sunday.

According to reports, England has provided at least £12m to 22 counter-narcotics projects in Pakistan – where six British nationals are on death row for drugs offences – with the aim of increasing the number of drug arrests and prosecutions, which can result in death sentences.

The United Kingdom is a major funder of Pakistan’s anti-narcotics force, which has a 92 per cent conviction rate.

About 8,000 people are on death row in Pakistan, more than any other country in the world. A moratorium on the death penalty was lifted in December in the wake of the Peshawar school attack, in which Taliban murdered 141 children. Since then, 24 people have been executed; another 500 are due to be killed in the coming months.

The Home Office policy is “in effect helping to send large numbers of people, including British nationals, to the hangman’s noose”, according to the human rights group Reprieve.

“Pakistan has the largest death row in the world, and is now actively executing prisoners – placing a number of Brits at risk. The UK government has given a series of flaccid excuses for continuing to support anti-drug raids in Pakistan, which very often see drug offenders sentenced to death,” Maya Foa, the head of Reprieve’s death penalty team, said.

“Now that the Pakistani authorities are once again carrying out executions, the lives of these people and many others are in grave danger,” Foa said. “If the UK is committed to ending the death penalty worldwide, why is British anti-narcotics aid supporting these drug convictions?”

More than 20 Britons are at risk of execution in Pakistan, according to figures published by the FCO earlier this month.