A year ago today, Pakistan amid its ravenous 2015 execution binge hanged Aftab Bahadur Masih in Lahore for a 1992 murder.

Two faces of Aftab Bahadur Masih, separated by two decades on death row.

According to the anti-death penalty organization Reprieve, Masih was only 15 years old when he committed the crime. According to Masih himself, he never committed it at all — but instead was tortured into confession by the police.

Don’t take my word for it. Masih wrote a moving first-person essay for the Guardian that was published hours before his hanging.

I just received my Black Warrant. It says I will be hanged by the neck until dead on Wednesday, 10 June. I am innocent, but I do not know whether that will make any difference.

Read the rest here. Masih was also a self-taught painter; one of his products can be seen in this Wall Street Journal story.

On this day..

• 1996: Huugjilt, wrongful execution
• 1566: Bartholome Tecia, Geneva sodomite
• 1697: The Paisley Witches
• 1863: Not Nathaniel Pruitt, reprieved deserter
• 1822: Armand Valle, carbonari plotter
• 1902: Hirsh Lekert, Jewish assassin
• 1944: Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane
• 1896: Amelia Dyer, baby farmer
• 1876: Kenneth Brown, father of Edith Cowan
• 1692: Bridget Bishop, the first Salem witch hanging
• 1942: The village of Lidice, for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
• 1358: Guillaume Cale, leader of the Jacquerie