Pakistan has finalised a list of around 500 militants for execution in the coming weeks, officials say, after the government lifted a moratorium on the death penalty in terror cases following a Taliban school massacre.
“The Interior Ministry has finalised the cases of 500 convicts who have exhausted all the appeals, their mercy petitions have been turned down by the president and their executions will take place in coming weeks,” a senior government official told AFP yesterday on condition of anonymity.
A second official confirmed the information.
Six militants have been hanged since Friday amid rising public anger over the December 16 slaughter in the northwestern city of Peshawar, which left 149 people dead including 133 children.
After the deadliest terror attack in Pakistani history, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday ended the six-year moratorium on the death penalty, reinstating it for terrorism-related cases.
Of the six hanged so far, five were involved in a failed attempt to assassinate then military ruler Pervez Musharraf in 2003, while one was involved in a 2009 attack on army headquarters.
Police, troops and paramilitary Rangers have been deployed across the country and airports and prisons put on red alert as the executions take place while troops intensify operations against Taliban militants in northwestern tribal areas.
Pakistani jets and ground forces killed 59 militants in northwestern Khyber tribal region near the Afghan border, the army said Friday. The army’s ground forces late Thursday killed 10 militants while jets killed another 17, including an Uzbek commander. Another 32 terrorists were killed by security forces in an ambush in Tirah valley in Khyber on Friday as they headed toward the Afghan border, the military said.
Army chief Gen Raheel Sharif late Thursday signed death warrants of six “hard core terrorists” convicted and sentenced to death by military courts.
Prime Minister Sharif has ordered the attorney general’s office to “actively pursue” capital cases currently in the courts, a government spokesperson said.
The prime minister also asked for appropriate measures for early disposal of the pending cases related to terrorism, the spokesperson said without specifically confirming the plan to execute 500.
Pakistan has described the Peshawar rampage as its own “mini 9/11,” calling it a game-changer in the fight against extremism.
Meanwhile, the decision to reinstate executions has been condemned by human rights groups, with the United Nations also calling for it to reconsider saying this would not stop terrorism and might even feed a “cycle of revenge.”
New York-based Human Rights Watch on Saturday termed the executions “a craven politicised reaction to the Peshawar killings” and demanded that no further hangings be carried out.
Pakistan began its de facto moratorium on civilian executions in 2008, but hanging remains on the statute books and judges continue to pass death sentences.Before Friday’s resumption, only one person had been executed since then – a soldier convicted by a court martial and hanged in November 2012.
