Waiting for the verdict: JPP continues efforts to save Shafqat Hussain

He is scheduled to be hanged tomorrow after FIA concluded he was not a minor at the time of offence.

KARACHI: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) may have concluded that Shafqat Hussain was not a juvenile at the time of offence but his lawyers continue their efforts to save the death row prisoner, who is scheduled to be hanged on May 6.

The Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), which had earlier filed a petition against the FIA report in the Islamabad High Court, is nervously awaiting the court's decision, due Tuesday (today). The verdict will decide whether Hussain receives a stay for his hanging or if his execution will go ahead as planned.

"For the past two weeks, the government had been asked to give a response to our concerns and has now been directed to appear tomorrow," says the organisation.

The FIA report had concluded that Hussain, who was awarded the death penalty for kidnapping and killing a seven-year-old boy, was not a minor at the time of offence. The case had gained countrywide attention after the JPP and Hussain's lawyers had claimed that the prisoner was only 14 years old when he was sentenced to death by the ATC in 2004. His execution was stayed by the government hours before he was scheduled to be hanged and an inquiry was sought to determine whether he was a juvenile at the time.

The lawyers argue that the FIA's findings were based solely on the police and jail records, which listed him as being 23 years old only on the basis of physical appearance. His birth was not registered when he was born.

"Shafqat's school enrolment records, which say that he was born in 1986, have been ignored by the government," claims JPP spokesperson Shahab Siddiqi. "Given this, he would have been 17 years old at the time of the offence and, therefore, a minor."

The FIA has maintained that all police, jail, legal and judicial records were examined in the inquiry. However, the lawyers say that the statement of Hussain's parents, their NICs and the family tree were not taken into consideration.

Claiming that the FIA was not a competent authority to carry out the investigations, the JPP says that the inquiry should instead have been done by a judicial commission.

"The government's failure to respond to the concerns raised in proceedings where a man's life is at stake is shocking," asserts JPP director Sarah Belal. "The hanging must be stayed so that the serious concerns about the legality of the execution and the inquiry can be addressed."

Belal believes that the government had already accepted that there was reasonable doubt about Hussain's age when his execution was stayed in March. "How can it now execute him without dispelling that doubt through a competent and legal inquiry?"

According to jail officials, Hussain has been moved to an isolated cell in the Karachi Central Jail ahead of his execution.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 5^th, 2015.