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Pakistan carries out first executions since 2008

December 19, 2014

Pakistan has carried out the first executions since the government ended a six-year moratorium on the death penalty this week. They come as the country steps up efforts to combat an Islamist insurgency.

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Pakistani police stand guard in the watch tower of central jail as security has been increased to high alert after government lifted a six-year moratorium on executions, in Faisalabad, Pakistan, 19 December 2014. EPA/ILYAS SHEIKH
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/I. Sheikh

Two convicted militants were hanged on Friday in Pakistan, just days after the government lifted a six-year ban on the death penalty following a brutal terror attack on a school earlier this week in which 149 people died, most of them children.

"Yes, two militants, Aqil - alias Coctor - Usman and Arshad Mehmood have been hanged in Faisalabad jail," Shuja Khanzada, Home Minister of central Punjab province, where the executions took place, told AFP news agency.

Aqil led a militant attack on the Pakistani military's headquarters in Rawalpindi in 2009, while Mehmood was convicted of involvement in an attempted assassination of former President Pervez Musharraf in 2003.

Pakistan imposed a de facto ban on executing civilians in 2008, although prisoners continue to receive death sentences, with rights group Amnesty International estimating that more than 8,000 prisoners are currently on death row in the country.

The Interior Ministry says some 30 percent of these have been convicted on terrorism-realted charges. Prison officials have said that at least 17 militants convicted on terror charges will be executed in the coming week.

Deterrent effect questioned

The government ended the moratorium on the death penalty for terror-related cases on Wednesday in response to the attack by Taliban militants on an army school in the city of Peshawar one day earlier.

The lifting of the ban came as Pakistani political and military leaders voiced their resolution to stamp out the country's Islamist insurgency.

The United Nations has, however, called on Islamabad to reinstate the ban, saying that "the death penalty has no measurable deterrent effect on levels of insurgent and terrorist violence" and "may even be counter-productive."

tj/rc (AFP, dpa, epa)