Four murder convicts executed in Punjab

At least 254 have been executed since a death penalty moratorium was lifted last December

MULTAN: Four men convicted of murder were hanged on Tuesday in jails across Punjab, officials said, bringing the total number of people executed since a death penalty moratorium was lifted last December to at least 254.

The four men were hanged early in the morning in Kasur and Gujrat districts of Punjab.

"All the executed people were involved in murder cases which were over a decade old," Chaudhry Arshad Saeed, an adviser to Punjab's chief minister for prison affairs, told AFP.

Another prisons official of the province confirmed the hangings.



Pakistan ended a six-year moratorium on the death penalty last year as part of a crackdown after Taliban militants gunned down more than 150 people, most of them children, at a school in the restive northwest.

Hangings were initially reinstated only for those convicted of terrorism, but in March they were extended to all capital offences.

Official figures on the number of people executed since are not available, but according to an AFP tally at least 254 have been killed.

At least 229 of those hangings have been carried out since March 10, when the moratorium was lifted completely -- or at an average rate of nearly one a day.



The European Union, the United Nations and human rights campaigners have all urged Pakistan to reinstate the capital punishment ban, with activists saying that of the dozens hanged in the past ten months, the vast majority have not been convicted of terror charges.

Amnesty International estimated in December that Pakistan has more than 8,000 prisoners on death row, most of whom have exhausted their appeals.