ATC issues Shafqat Hussain's death warrants for June 9

Shafqat will be executed on June 9 at 4:30am in Karachi jail; death warrants issued for a fourth time

KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court in Karachi issued on Monday death warrants for murder convict Shafqat Hussain.

Shafqat will be executed on June 9 at 4:30am in Karachi jail.

This is the fourth time a death warrant has been issued for the convict whose execution was stayed following confusion over his age at the time he committed the crime.

Hussain was arrested and sentenced to death in 2004 for kidnapping and killing a seven-year-old boy from an apartment building in Karachi where he was working as a security guard.

On May 21, the Islamabad High Court dismissed Shafqat's  intra court appeal challenging a May 11 IHC judgment, maintaining that the petition calling for the formation of a judicial commission to determine his age was not maintainable.

Read: Intra court appeal: Shafqat Hussain’s plea dismissed

On May 11, Justice Athar Minallah had dismissed Hussain’s plea for his age to be verified by a judicial forum.

Earlier, as questions reverberated in the news media about the age of the death-row prisoner at the time of his conviction in 2004, jail officials  insisted that the inmate was 23 years old when he was incarcerated.

Citing the admissions register of the Karachi Central Jail, which records the age of every incoming inmate, they said Shafqat’s age was 23 when he was brought to the prison in 2004. “We record the age by our findings and by asking the prisoner. According to our register, he was not 14 but 23,” said one official.

Another prison official said there is a ‘huge difference’ between an inmate who is 14 years old and another who is 23 years old. “If he was 14, we would have sent him to the juvenile jail. Why would we keep him in the main jail?” said the official.

Read: Death row prisoner: Jail officials insist Shafqat wasn’t underage

Shafqat’s family and lawyers have disputed the prison record. They claim he was 14 years old when he was sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court for kidnapping and killing a seven-year-old who went missing from the apartments where the convict worked.

The murder provision was later reduced to involuntary manslaughter and he was sentenced to death for kidnapping. Shafqat’s lawyers claim he was forced into confessing his role in the crime after suffering torture at the hands of the police.