Notes from the underground: Conned in Pakistan, convicted abroad

For Pakistanis on death row in Saudi jails, time seems to be running out

KARACHI: Sixty-year-old Nazir Ahmad, a Pakistani on death row in Saudi Arabia’s Braiman prison, frequently tells his wife in Pakistan of his fellow inmates’ executions. Faced with the recent surge in beheadings of convicts in the Kingdom, it looks as if he is preparing her for his most likely fate.

“He tells me that people [in Saudi jails] are executed without any notice,” says Nazir’s wife Tahira Bibi. “They are not even allowed to call their families,” she adds with a quivering voice while speaking to The Express Tribune by telephone from her home in Lahore’s Walton Road area.



Nazir is one of the 18 Pakistanis imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for whom the Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), a human rights law firm, is fighting for. The organisation has filed a petition in the Lahore High Court (LHC), urging it to remind the government of its responsibility to these men.

Two of them have already been beheaded. The remaining 16, who hail mostly from Lahore, Sargodha, Faisalabad and Toba Tek Singh, face the death penalty as well.

Since November 2014, 11 Pakistanis have been beheaded in Saudi Arabia.

“The men we are raising our voice for are the poorest of the poor, “says JPP spokesperson Shahab Siddiqi. “They were either framed or coerced into smuggling narcotics. They have no history of committing the crime for personal gain.”

“Their ignorance and hopes for a better life have been misused,” he adds.

For Nazir, it was a relative who persuaded him to go to Saudi Arabia for work. The relative told Nazir he had contacts in Islamabad and got him to pay for a passport and visa. Enticed by better prospects, Nazir decided to quit his job as a driver for a relative of a politician and agreed to move.

In 2006, Nazir went to Islamabad after a recruitment agent told him his ticket had been confirmed. Upon reaching the capital, however, people he had never seen before locked him up and forced him to swallow packets of heroin at gunpoint. Nazir was then shipped off to Saudi Arabia and told someone would meet him there to recover the drugs.

“Nazir phoned us from Islamabad before leaving. He told us that he would call once he reached Jeddah,” recalls Tahira. “But we received no response for the next three to four days.”

Nazir did call eventually, says Tahira. In tears, he broke the news to his family that he had been arrested.

“We were shocked to hear what happened. My husband is innocent. He was forced to take the drugs with him.”

Tahira has spent the last nine year, hoping that Nazir will return one day. But she is afraid that it may never happen.

“My sons have left their education to work to support the family. In our home, there is no happiness, even on Eid. My children are just sad and cry.”

JPP Legal Director Maryam Haq calls for bringing Pakistanis imprisoned in Saudi Arabia back home. “The government must bring these prisoners back,” she says. “Their rights as citizens of Pakistan don’t end at the border.”

Haq points out that prisoners in Saudi Arabia are not provided a lawyer if they can’t afford one.

“The accused, if he can’t speak Arabic, depends solely on an interpreter, who may or may not translate correctly,” she says. According to JPP officials, there has been an instance where an interpreter told a judge that the suspect had confessed even though the latter had denied the crime.

“As such, the Pakistan Embassy should provide legal assistance to nationals who are imprisoned abroad,” Haq adds.

The bodies of those executed by Saudi authorities are also never returned to Pakistan. The men executed in the Kingdom are buried there only, JPP officials say.

“Why is it that these men are not stopped when they are in Pakistan?” asks Haq. “There must be a proper mechanism for investigating drug smuggling from Pakistan,” she adds.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 23^rd, 2015.