Pakistan overtakes Saudi Arabia in executions over 300 this year

[Bengal_Tiger]

Executions see dramatic rise in Pakistan

Pakistan has overtaken Saudi Arabia in the number of executions as more than 300 people have been put to death in 2015 alone, with another 8,000 prisoners on death row.


Pakistan lifted a moratorium on executions last December in response to a deadly Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar that killed more than 150 children. The death penalty was initially reserved for terror convicts but was extended to all capital crimes in March 2015. The executions reached a peak in October 2015 when 47 convicts were hanged to death.
The dramatic rise in executions has left behind Saudi Arabia which executed 151 people till November 2015, highest since 1995. Pakistan now ranks No. 3 in 2015, after China and Iran for executing people.
According to Amnesty International, Pakistan has more than 8,000 prisoners on death row, most of whom have exhausted the appeals process.
Supporters of the capital punishment in Pakistan claim that it is the only effective way to the deal with the rise of terrorist groups in the country. However, critics say that fewer than one in six death penalties were linked to militancy.
Maya Pastakia, a Pakistan campaigner for Amnesty International said:
The government is touting executions as the way of tackling the country's law and order problems. But there is no compelling evidence that the death penalty will act as particular deterrent over and above any other form of punishment. A suicide bomber won't be deterred by the death penalty. Often the accused in the initial stages will be given a state appointed lawyer who is often poorly trained and lacks competence.
As per Pakistani law, 27 crimes carry the death sentence in Pakistan, including terrorism, rape, adultery and blasphemy.


Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/w...#ixzz3ra7MgKd6


Reddit comments, https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/c...he_number_of/:

budbuk 56 minutes ago

Just another day in another hell hole; pakistan

Detroit_Guy 45 minutes ago

At that rate it'll take them 26 years to execute them all. The logistics just don't work.

8,000 death row prisoners with 300 being killed per year (under 6 a week) would mean it would take 26 years for Pakistan to kill all of them.

[Da Bannu Mazdigar]

We should speed this up but make sure that no innocent is hanged in the process

[Bengal_Tiger]

Family Says Pakistan to Execute Paraplegic Man Within Days

By MUNIR AHMED, ASSOCIATED PRESS ISLAMABAD — Nov 21, 2015, 8:33

Pakistan's only paraplegic death-row inmate will be executed in the coming days at a high-security prison in the industrial city of Faisalabad, his mother and an international rights group said Saturday.

Abdul Basit, 43, has been paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair since contracting meningitis in prison in 2010. According to his lawyer and family, he has been on death row since 2009 after being convicted of killing a man over a financial dispute in Punjab province.

On Saturday, Basit's mother Nusrat Perveen said jail officials asked her to have a final meeting with her son on Tuesday before he is hanged the following morning. "I am in a state of shock. I appeal to the president and prime minister of Pakistan to pardon my son on medical and humanitarian grounds," she told The Associated Press.

The decision has been widely condemned by rights groups.

"It is bewildering that Pakistan has revived its appalling plans to hang a man who is unable to stand," said Maya Foa, director of the death penalty team at Reprieve, an international human rights organization.

"Nothing has changed since Basit's execution was halted earlier this year, on the grounds that his disability could mean that he might suffer from a prolonged, needlessly cruel execution," she said.

Sara Belal, a lawyer at the Justice Project Pakistan legal aid group, also condemned the decision to once again schedule Basit for execution.

Basit's mother said she sent a mercy petition to the president weeks ago to pardon her son but received no reply. "In September, jail officials were taking my son toward the gallows on his wheelchair when his execution was halted on medical grounds," she said.

Perveen said she saw rope scars on the wrists of her son when she met with him a week after the halting of his execution. "I am again waiting for a miracle to happen," she said.

Pakistan's president has the constitutional authority to pardon any convicted person.

Pakistan has hanged nearly 300 people, most of them convicted criminals and not Taliban or other insurgents, since it lifted a 2008 moratorium on executions in December after a deadly Taliban attack on a school killed 150 people, mostly children.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/family-pakistan-execute-paraplegic-man-week-35343164

[Bengal_Tiger]

Double standard over hangings alleged


NASIR IQBAL — UPDATED 35 MINUTES AGO






ISLAMABAD: Rights activist Asma Jahangir has criticised the government for demonstrating “disproportionately high passion” against the execution of two opposition politicians in Bangladesh through unfair trials over those being hanged by military courts or Pakistanis executed in Saudi Arabia.

The response sent a message that the government of Pakistan had extraordinary love and affection for the opposition members in Bangladesh than its citizens, Ms Jahangir told reporters at the Supreme Court on Monday.

She was reacting to the response by the Foreign Office and Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan expressing anguish and concern over the execution of Bangladesh National Party leader Salahuddin Quader Chowdhry and Ali Ahsan Mujahid of Jamaat-i-Islami.



“Equal passion, we hope, will be shown by the government” for the people on death row in Pakistan than being hanged elsewhere in the world by denying due process, she said.

She was of the opinion that the hangings in Bangladesh would further deepen the divide and haunt its politics in future. She said that all human rights activists who monitored these trials agreed that due process had not been given to the two accused.

“We have condemned the unfortunate developments and even given out urgent appeals to the Amnesty International and other international human rights organisations in this regard,” she added.

But, Ms Jahangir said, Pakistan should first take up the issue of capital punishment through unfair trials here and of those Pakistanis who were being consistently executed in Saudi Arabia and then show disproportionately high passion for the politicians of Bangladesh.

She said the government was only confirming the fact that two men were political agents and working for the cause of Pakistan. Are these two Bangladeshi more important than the people living in Pakistan, she asked. If the answer is in the affirmative, the government should also explain why and what for.

Ms Jahangir admitted that the two politicians had been executed without affording due process, but regretted that the same right was being denied to the people facing trial in military courts on terrorism charges.

“We are against the death penalty and unfair trials whether in Pakistan, Bangladesh or elsewhere,” she said, adding that everybody knew that the trial of the two Bangladeshi politicians was flawed, but the role of Pakistan was something which was not understandable.

“If they (Pakistan government) are against the death penalty or the undue process, they should look into the trials being conducted by the military courts,” she said.

JHELUM INCIDENT: Ms Jahangir condemned the setting on fire of a chipboard factory and a place of worship of the Ahmadi community in Jhelum on Nov 21 by a mob over alleged desecration of the Holy Quran. She was also not happy over demonstrations by some religious parties against the Oct 27 Supreme Court judgment rejecting Mumtaz Qadri’s appeal seeking deletion of terrorism charges against him.

“If they are going to dictate us then what Zarb-i-Azab against the militants was all about,” she asked. This is scary because they are intimidating state institutions.

Ms Jahangir called for a high-powered inquiry into the Jhelum incident either by a parliamentary committee or by the Punjab Assembly.

Published in Dawn, November 24th, 2015

http://www.dawn.com/news/1221835/double-standard-over-hangings-alleged

1. Both of the two men executed in Bangladesh this week worked to promote Pakistani military and state interests hence their natural defence by the Pakistani deep state e.g. interior minister, Nisar Chaudhry.

- Mujahid was a leader of the pro-Pakistan militia, Al-Badr which organized death squads to massacre Bengali civilians.

- Salahudeen Qauder Chaudhry was a man whose father was at times acting president of the united Pakistan and lobbied against India whilst a member of the previous pro-Pakistan, BNP government.



Drawing of Salahudeen Qauder Choudhry and Mujahid (left and right), Chaudhry was convicted for murdering Hindus and unarmed Bengali civilians, Mujahid's role as a leader of death squads was well-known through out the country but he was protected after independence due to Saudi influence.




2. Asma Jahangir knows the obvious that these two were important assets for the Pakistani deep state, hence the fury over their elimination, but she is asking the question why are Pakistanis being executed in Pakistan or in Saudi Arabia not as important?

Answer: They are not assets to promote the strategic interests of the Pakistani military and deep state.

[Bengal_Tiger]

Saudi Arabia 'to execute more than 50 convicted of terrorism'

26 November 2015



Ali al-Nimr - whose case sparked a global outcry - is reportedly among those at risk of execution

Amnesty International has expressed alarm at reports that the authorities in Saudi Arabia are planning to execute dozens of people in a single day.
The newspaper Okaz said 55 people were awaiting execution for "terrorist crimes", while a now-deleted report by al-Riyadh said 52 would die soon.
They are thought to include Shia who took part in anti-government protests.
Amnesty said that given the spike in executions this year, it had no option but to take the reports very seriously.
The group believes at least 151 people have been put to death in Saudi Arabia so far this year - the highest recorded figure since 1995.
In 2014, the total number of executions carried out was reported to be 90.

'Unfair trials'

The Saudi newspaper reports said those facing execution in the coming days included "al-Qaeda terrorists" and people from the Awamiya area.
The alleged al-Qaeda militants were accused of attempting to overthrow the government and carry out attacks using small arms, explosives and surface-to-air missiles, Okaz reported.

The Awamiya residents were meanwhile convicted of sedition, attacks on security personnel and interference in neighbouring Bahrain, it said.
Awamiya is a town in the Qatif region of oil-rich Eastern Province.
Since 2011, it has been the centre of protests by Saudi Arabia's Shia minority, which has long complained of marginalisation at the hands of the Sunni monarchy.


Most of those condemned to death in Saudi Arabia are beheaded, but some are shot
Among those at imminent risk of execution were six Shia activists from Awamiya "who were clearly convicted in unfair trials", according to Amnesty.
"It is clear that the Saudi Arabian authorities are using the guise of counter-terrorism to settle political scores," said James Lynch, Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa deputy director.
"Three of those six activists were sentenced for 'crimes' committed while they were children and have said that they were tortured to confess."
The three juvenile offenders are Ali al-Nimr - whose case sparked a global outcry earlier this year - Abdullah al-Zaher and Hussein al-Marhoon.
On Tuesday, the mothers of five of the six activists wrote to King Salman, imploring him to grant clemency, after learning that their sons had been subjected to a "random" medical examination. They believed it was a sign of impending execution.
Four of the five have been kept in solitary confinement, in a wing housing death row inmates, since being moved to al-Hair prison in Riyadh in early October.
"These executions must not go ahead and Saudi Arabia must lift the veil of secrecy around its death penalty cases, as part of a fundamental overhaul of its criminal justice system," Mr Lynch warned.
Last month, the UK foreign secretary said he did not expect Ali al-Nimr - the nephew of a prominent Shia cleric also sentenced to death - to be executed.
Saudi Arabia argues that death sentences are carried out in line with Sharia and with the strictest fair trial standards and safeguards in place.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-34931205

[Bengal_Tiger]

Paraplegic man's execution postponed in Pakistan!

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2015/11/25/uncategorized/paraplegic-convict-wins-two-month-reprieve-at-11th-hour/

Pakistan has executed at least one person a day for 11 months

Florence Taylor JUNIOR STAFF WRITER 18 November 2015

Family mourn the death of Aftab Bahadur, who was executed in June. He was just 15 when he was arrested.




Pakistan has executed 311 people since December 2014 when the death penalty was reintroduced, according to Ekklesia.

Excluding religious holidays, during which no executions take place, Pakistan's own records show that the country has executed at least one person a day for the last eleven months.


An anonymous Interior Ministry official said the country's total for hangings "now stands at 311" since December last year.

This number has been revealed two weeks after the Pakistani government said they have some 6,000 people on death row in their country. Pakistan's death row is believed to be the largest in the world.

Link



*Pakistanis and "Islamists" complain when Bangladeshis execute a few war criminals, but turn a blind eye to Pakistan killing hundreds of Pakistanis, a different Pakistani every day in their prisons.



"Islamists" in Turkey supporting Bangladeshi politician, Qader Molla, executed for alleged war crimes, the same "Islamists" are quite over the deaths of 300 Pakistanis being killed by Pakistani authorities.