Capital offences : Govt rings death knell for 8,000 convicts

Pakistan ends moratorium on executions for all death row inmates.

ISLAMABAD: The government has officially ended the moratorium on the death penalty for all capital offences just three months after the ban was partially lifted for terror convicts in the wake of the Peshawar school massacre.

Officials told The Express Tribune on Tuesday that President Mamnoon Hussain on the advice of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had directed all the provincial home departments to resume hangings of all prisoners whose mercy petitions had been rejected.

“Capital punishment may be carried out strictly as per law and only where all legal options and avenues have been exhausted and mercy petitions under Article 45 of the Constitution have been rejected by the president,” said a senior interior ministry official, citing the notification.



The interior ministry has been ordered to carry out executions of death sentences awarded to over 8,000 prisoners interned at more than five dozen jails of the country, said the official seeking anonymity.

In the first stage, officials say, Punjab will hang 47 prisoners on death row in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail. There were no civilian hangings until the Peshawar school attack on December 16, 2014, after which the government lifted the moratorium on executions but only for those convicted in terrorism cases.

The Peshawar tragedy sparked national outrage, leading to changes in the Constitution to establish special trial courts under the National Action Plan (NAP). More than 20 terrorists have been hanged since then.

In Punjab alone, more than 800 hardcore terrorists, most of them associated with proscribed militant and sectarian outfits, are to be tried in military courts under the revised anti-terror strategy.

Background discussions with officials dealing with the NAP reveal that law enforcement agencies, in their latest push to curb terrorism, have enlisted 813 militants, whose cases are likely to be referred to three military courts by July or August.

In the first phase, cases of 178 ‘jet-black terrorists’ will be sent to the military courts in Lahore, Sheikhupura and Rawalpindi, a senior police officer told The Express Tribune. Around 282 terrorists, who have been catalogued to this fresh list, were involved in sectarian killings in Punjab.

Since December 28, agencies have arrested over 10,154 militants across the province, official figures reveal.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 11^th, 2015.