ATC issues Shafqat Hussain's death warrants for fifth time

Shafqat's execution will now be carried out on August 4 in Karachi jail

KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court (ATC) on Monday once again issued death warrants for murder convict Shafqat Hussain for August 4.

This is the fifth time the ATC has issued death warrants for the convict whose execution was stayed earlier following confusion over his age at the time he committed the crime.

Read: ATC issues Shafqat Hussain's death warrants for June 9

The ATC has directed Shafqat’s hanging under the supervision of a judicial magistrate after completion of all legal and medical formalities.

Last month, the ATC had issued death warrants for Shafqat for June 9 but his execution was postponed for the fourth time – not by the Supreme Court or the federal government, and certainly not by the president. His unlikely saviour was the superintendent of the Central Jail Karachi, Kazi Nazir Ahmed.

“There was reasonable doubt. And there was the Supreme Court hearing scheduled the same morning is why I decided to stay the hanging,” the superintendent had told The Express Tribune.

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.

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

Read: Saved by compassion: An unlikely saviour comes to Shafqat’s aid

Pakistan has resumed the execution of death row prisoners a little over a month after it suspended the practice out of respect for the month of Ramazan and after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif instructed authorities to respect “the sanctity of the holy month”, by observing a moratorium on capital punishment.