Condemned: The ‘children’ doomed for the gallows

Juvenile Justice System Ordinance decrees no accused under age of 18 can be awarded the capital punishment.

KARACHI:

The families of two death row prisoners, who claim to be teenagers when they were awarded the death penalties, are now helplessly waiting for a miracle. All their pleas for mercy to the government and judicial authorities have gone unheeded thus far.

Muhammad Afzal Qureshi and Shafqat Hussain are to be hanged inside the Karachi Central Jail on Tuesday and Thursday respectively. “We are just praying and hoping for a miracle. There is nothing we can do now,” says Shafqat’s elder brother, Majeed while speaking to The Express Tribune. According to their families, Afzal was 17 years old, and Shafqat was 14 years old when the court, in separate cases, handed out the capital punishment to them.

Section 12 of the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance (JJS0) 2000 clearly states that a suspect under 18 years of age cannot be awarded the capital punishment.

Shafqat’s case

Shafqat Hussain, who is to be executed on March 19, was 14 years old when an anti-terrorism court sentenced him to death in 2004, for kidnapping and killing a seven-year-old boy. His lawyers and family have maintained that the boy is innocent and was forced to confess to the crime following a nine-day torture in police detention.

The prisoner’s brother, Majeed, who is currently in Islamabad and will be arriving in Karachi today for the final meeting with his brother, says the family has been left devastated.

The federal government had earlier stayed the execution orders for some time, saying that an inquiry would be held into the case to determine his age. But nothing has been done. “The government has conducted no inquiry. And now his death warrants have been issued. My brother is innocent.”

The Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), which has been actively raising a voice against his execution, has condemned the death warrants. JPP’s lawyer and executive director, Sarah Belal, termed the whole affair outrageous. “The federal government had said that there would be an inquiry into the case. But no inquiry was conducted to confirm his age and prove the evidence of juvenility.” The JPP feared there may be a significant number of inmates who share a similar story to that of Shafqat and Afzal.

Afzal’s case

Convicted of murdering a man during a robbery bid in 1998, Afzal’s mother too claimed he was a juvenile when he was awarded the death penalty. “My son was 17 years old when the judge announced the death penalty. You can check his jail records. He was in the juvenile detention centre.”

She pleaded the government to halt the execution saying that her son was not a terrorist and had even completed his education in jail. But in the case of Afzal, the sections of JJSO could not be invoked as he was awarded the sentence before its promulgation. Human rights activist Iqbal Detho, however, said that since Pakistan is signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Afzal should not have been awarded capital punishment.

 



PHOTO: AFZAL'S FAMILY

 

No death sentence to juveniles

According to legal experts, the JJSO clearly states that a court cannot hand out the death sentence to an accused under 18 years of age.

“This is a special law which overrides others, and person under the age of 18 years cannot be award death penalty,” says lawyer and activist Zia Awan. He that the lawyers of both the convicts had not even raised the issue of age at the time the sentence was awarded.

Awan says that such issues arise because a lot of people don’t have birth certificates and there is no registration. But for that matter, bone ossification tests are carried out.

“In the name of terror, we have to ensure that there is no miscarriage of justice, and rule of law prevails.”

Published in The Express Tribune, March 15^th, 2015.