Thursday
28 February 2013
By Hasnaat Malik
ISLAMABAD:
The Supreme Court was informed on Wednesday that 7,046 inmates on death row are
awaiting execution across the country.
The
Interior Ministry, through the attorney general of Pakistan’s office, on
Wednesday submitted complete details of the prisoners on death row in different
prisons of the country. Petitioner Barrister Zafarullah Khan of the Watan Party
has drawn the Supreme Court’s attention to the ordeal faced by such inmates.
According to the details provided by the ministry, 5,378 appeals against the
death sentence are pending in the provincial high courts and 1,031 in the
Supreme Court.
The
province-wise breakdown of death row prisoners is: Punjab, 4,981; Sindh, 266;
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 102; and Balochistan, 29. Meanwhile, 532 mercy applications
are pending before the president. It has also been learnt that the president
has stopped the implementation of 78 capital punishment sentences, whereas the
GHQ has pending with it appeals of six military personnel, while the Federal
Shariat Court has 21 appeals.
It
is noteworthy that the PPP government, which had announced a moratorium on
executions in November 2008, carried out its first execution last year when
Muhammed Hussain, a soldier who was convicted and sentenced to death in 2009
for murdering one of his colleagues, was hanged in November 2012. This is not
the first time that the ordeal of inmates on death row has been highlighted
before the Supreme Court. In 2008, the court had taken up a suo motu notice on
a news report that 7,000 inmates on death row were waiting for their execution.
The
court had asked the government if it was serious about bringing out any
legislation to commute death sentences into life term. On June 21, 2008, former
prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani had announced that his government would
recommend to the president to commute death sentence of thousands of prisoners
into life imprisonment as part of a birthday tribute to slain PPP leader
Benazir Bhutto. According to reports, 62 countries in the world still maintain
death penalty, while 92 countries have abolished it completely. Ten countries
retain it, but only for the crimes committed during war times.
During
the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto government in the 1970s, life sentence was increased to
25 years from 14 years with the aim to completely abolish capital punishment in
the years to come. But the Ziaul Haq regime retained both the 25-year life
sentence and death penalty.
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