Karachi: Despite a storm of protests clogging the Pakistani government, the country has executed Shafqat hussain who was convicted of killing a child when he was a minor. Resuming capital punishment, the government hanged Hussain before dawn, at a jail in Karachi, for killing a 7 year old in 2004.
The case has attracted attention and concerns from the United Nations as the man's lawyers and family claim he was only 15 at the time of the murder and was tortured into a false confession. His distraught family sat stunned with the news after seeing Hussain reprieved from the gallows four times. Mother Makhni Begum said, “My son was innocent, only Allah will prove his innocence in his court. We can't do anything but they will face Allah on the day of judgement.”
His brother said he continued to protest against the conviction till the end and his last words were, “I never even touched the boy. I want to let the world know that as I lay down my life.” After receiving the boy's body, his family claimed the hanging wasn't carried out properly as “half of his neck is separated from his body.”
The United Nations rights experts had said his trial “fell short of international standards” and had urged Pakistan against hanging him without investigating the torture claims and, consider his age. The Kashmir government even made a last minute plea to President Mamnoon Hussain to postpone the execution, but the voice went unheard. Even though the results weren't published officially, a probe into Hussain's age allegedly ruled he was an adult at the time of his conviction.
British anti-death penalty campaign group Reprieve said the hanging represented “all that is wrong with Pakistan's race to the gallows,” and Amnesty International accused the government of “callous indifference” to human life.
Pakistan has hanged around 180 convicts since the end of a six year moratorium on executions in December after Taliban militants massacred more than 150 people at a school, most of them children. Hangings were paused during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan but resumed last week.
