2015: Twelve in Pakistan

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Repudiating its former death penalty moratorium with bombast, the government of Pakistan hanged 12 men today.

From 2008 to 2014, Pakistan while continuing to hand down death sentences had suspended their completion; a soldier condemned by court-martial and hanged in 2012 was the sole execution during that period.

As these pages have recently noted, the December 16 Peshawar school massacre abruptly ended that moratorium.

Islamabad resumed executions almost immediately thereafter, explicitly as a response to that atrocity. Those were, at first, hangings of prisoners convicted of terrorism-related offenses — not connected to Peshawar per se but tit-for-tat in at least a thematic fashion.

Approximately 27 terrorists with pre-existing death sentences hanged over the ensuing weeks.

But in keeping with the tradition of our age, “just terrorists” was just the camel’s nose under the tent.

Earlier this very month, the Interior Ministry announced an end to the death penalty moratorium for all crimes — casting many more people under the pall of potentially imminent execution.

The execution of death sentences may be carried out strictly as per the law and only where all legal options and avenues have been exhausted and mercy petitions under Article 45 of the Constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan have been rejected by the president.

Pakistan has continued even during the moratorium to be one of the most active death-sentencing countries in the world, and has an estimated 8,000 “ordinary” condemned criminals. Because many — up to 1,000 — of those prisoners’ judicial processes and clemency appeals ran their course during the time of the moratorium, and because President Nawaz Sharif has shown an avidity in the three months since Peshawar for the hangman’s services, it has been feared that Pakistan’s execution toll this year could easily vault straight into the triple digits.

That prospective hecatomb is yet to be determined — but today’s start will not reassure human rights advocates.

Different media outlets are giving slightly different rosters of the executed this morning, and Zafar Iqbal confusingly appears to be a name shared by two different prisoners — so this list (via the Pakistan Tribune) is offered only tentatively pending more definitive revisions. It appears to me that all or nearly all committed murder, often in the course of some other crime such as robbery or rape.

  • Multan (1) — Zafar Iqbal (another man there named Wazar Nazir was reportedly reprieved at the last moment)
  • Karchi (2) — Muhammad Faisal and Muhammad Afzal
  • Faisalabad (1) — Muhammad Nawaz
  • Rawalpindi (2) — Malik Muhammad Nadeem Zaman and Muhammad Jawed
  • Gujranwala (1) — Muhammad Iqbal
  • Jhang (3) – Muhammad Riaz, Muhammad Sharif, and Mubashir Ali (or Abbas?)
  • Mianwali (2) — Rab Nawaz and Zafar Iqbal

The hanged Muhammad Afzal’s shrouded body is received by his brother in Karachi.

A second man in Multan, named Wazar Nazir, was reported reprieved at the last moment, as was an Asghar Ali in Dera Ghazi Khan.

According to Dawn.com, these executions bring the count of those executed since Peshawar to 39.

At least one more hanging is scheduled for this week: Shafqat Hussain, allegedly tortured into confessing to a murder at the age of just 14 or 15.

On this day..

Possibly related executions: