Convicted inmates: Four prisoners executed in Punjab

ISLAMABAD:

Four prisoners condemned for murder and kidnapping were executed in jails across the country, officials said, bringing the total number executed since the death penalty was resumed in December to 65.

The four prisoners went to the gallows in Rawalpindi, Sargodha, Mianwali and Attock across Punjab.

“The gallows were set up a few days before the executions,” a prison official at the jail told AFP.

The execution at Sargodha central jail was the first since its establishment in 1910. The convict, Muhammad Riaz was executed for murder during an attempted robbery.

In Attock jail, prisoner Akramul Haq was convicted for kidnapping a three-year-old girl and charged under anti-terrorism laws.

The remaining two convicts were hanged for murder.

A moratorium on the death penalty had been in force since 2008, but executions were restarted in December after Taliban militants gunned down 154 people, most of them children, at a school in the restive northwest.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 1^st, 2015.