Controversy after Pakistan executes 'teen' killer Shafqat Hussain

After numerous postponements and despite international protests, Pakistan on early Tuesday morning hanged the 'teen' death row convict Shafqat Hussain in a Karachi jail.

Controversy after Pakistan executes 'teen' killer Shafqat Hussain

Karachi: Despite international protests, Pakistan on early Tuesday morning hanged the 'teen' death row convict Shafqat Hussain in a Karachi jail.

Shafaqat, 25, was arrested in 2004 when he was 14, and sentenced to death for killing a seven-year-old boy in Karachi.

He was allowed to meet with his family for one last time, before being hanged, the BBC reported.

Many international rights group, including Reprieve had been campaigning for a stay on his execution.

Reprieve contends that despite a growing chorus against the hanging by governments of the Sindh and Azad Kashmir regions, the Sindh Human Rights Commission (SHRC), UN experts, and international NGOs, Pakistan authorities "never undertook a proper, judicial investigation".

 Maya Foa, director of the death penalty team at international human rights organisation Reprieve said: “Shafqat’s execution speaks to all that is wrong with Pakistan’s  race to the gallows. He faced a catalogue of injustice, sentenced to death while still a child after being tortured by the police until he produced a so-called confession".

She also attributed the government’s decision to hang Shafqat "more a show of political power than anything to do with justice".  

Hussain's lawyers and family claimed that he was a juvenile at that time, but the police insisted that he was over 20.

Hussain's supporters also claim that he was tortured into confessing the crime.

His execution was deferred four times this year, the latest being in June.

Distraught over execution, Hussain's sister questioned why his innocent brother was hanged.

“Why did they hang my innocent brother, only because we were poor?" the AFP quoted his inconsolable sister Sumaira Bibi.

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