Pakistan yesterday lifted a six-year moratorium on the death penalty, a day after the deadliest ever Taliban terror attack on a school in Peshawar that killed 132 children and 16 others.
It also coincides with a high-level Pakistan state visit to Kabul, in which Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, accompanied by army chief and head of intelligence, is set to discuss tackling insurgency with the Afghan president and Nato commander, reports AFP.
Pakistan yesterday also began three days of mourning for the 148 killed in the attack on the school.
The bloodshed that comes as a revenge for an ongoing military crackdown on militants, shocked the nation and put pressure on the government to do more to tackle the Taliban.
“It was decided that this moratorium should be lifted. The prime minister approved,” said government spokesman Mohiuddin Wan, referring to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s approval of the decision by a ministerial committee.
“Black warrants will be issued within a day or two,” he said, referring to execution orders, reports Reuters
He did not give any details about who might be executed under such orders.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed the attack, in which heavily armed militants rampaged through the school killing indiscriminately.
PM Nawaz Sharif said there is now no distinction between “good and bad Taliban” and that the country is united to fight the menace of terrorism.
The moratorium was imposed in 2008 and only one execution has taken place since then.
It is believed that there are more than 8,000 prisoners on death row in Pakistan, about 10% convicted of offences labelled “terrorism,” said Justice Project Pakistan, a legal aid group.
Terrorism has a very broad definition under Pakistani law. About 17,000 cases of terrorism are pending in special courts.
Mourning
Funerals for the victims were held yesterday, many of whose bodies were pulled from the school still wearing their smart green uniforms drenched in blood.
Across the country many schools closed as a mark of respect, while others held special prayers for those killed.
Colleges, offices and markets were also closed across Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the northwestern province of which Peshawar is the capital and which has suffered the worst of the Taliban’s bloody seven-year insurgency.
Across the border in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi put aside acrimony with Pakistan to ask schools to observe two minutes’ silence to honour the dead.
A survivor’s account
The worst of the bloodshed came in a large auditorium where hundreds of teenage students were being given career-advice. Around 100 bodies were found there, the army said.
Ahmad Faraz, 14, survived with a bullet wound to the shoulder and a broken hip suffered in a stampede to flee the gunmen.”There were kids under the desks. One gunman spoke and the other replied: ‘Do not leave a single one alive’,” Faraz told AFP from hospital.
“And then they begin killing us one by one, under the desks and under the benches. I was watching them with one eye and one came closer to me, it was like a nightmare.
“He shot me in the shoulder and I thought ‘this is the end.’ Then he turned to another desk. I heard the screaming with every bullet they fired,” the kid said.
Pak-Afghan chemistry
Afghanistan routinely accuses Pakistan of providing shelter within its borders to the Afghan Taliban, while Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of protecting members of the Pakistani Taliban.
Pakistan Army chief Raheel Sharif is likely to raise this issue with Afghan leaders during the talks, a Pakistani security official said. The handing over of Pakistani Taliban chief Mullah Fazlullah, who is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan, may also figure at the talks.
But retired Afghan general Atiqullah Amarkhail dismissed the trip as an attempt to distract attention from the failure to prevent the attack on the school.
Pakistan’s army and the Inter Services Intelligence, better known as the ISI, are widely seen as the driving force behind the country’s defence and foreign policies.
Afghanistan is facing its own surge in violence as US-led Nato troops pull out by the end of the year and are replaced by a 12,500-strong support mission tasked with advising and assisting the Afghan security forces.
Recent deadly attacks have targeted army buses, mine clearance teams and foreign compounds in Kabul.