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Pakistani Christian Aftab Bahadur Masih hanged in Lahore

Pakistani Christian Aftab Bahadur Masih hanged in Lahore

aftab-2Pakistan Today: Aftab Bahadur Masih was executed on Wednesday morning in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail.
According to rights groups, Masih was tortured into confessing to a murder committed more than two decades ago, when he was still a minor.
“Aftab Bahadur Masih, a Christian man, was hanged in Kot Lakhpat prison of Lahore Wednesday morning,” an official at the jail said on condition of anonymity.
The execution comes just days after Shafqat Hussain ─ also convicted for a crime reportedly committed as a child ─ was granted a last-minute reprieve.
Masih, a Christian, had spent 23 years in prison after being convicted of murder in Lahore in 1992.
The Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), a law firm handling his case, and British rights group Reprieve said he was just 15 at the time of his arrest and so too young to face the death penalty.
They also argue he was tortured into confessing to the crimes, as were two of the witnesses against him — including his co-accused Ghulam Mustafa — who have both since retracted their statements.
“This is a truly shameful day for Pakistan’s justice system,” Maya Foa, director of Reprieve’s death penalty team, said in a statement. “To the last, Pakistan refused even to grant his lawyers the few days needed to present evidence which would have proved his innocence. This is a travesty of justice and tragedy for all those who knew Aftab.”
Dozens of activists and relatives of Masih held a protest on Tuesday outside the Lahore Press Club demanding the execution be stopped, while church leaders had also appealed to the president for a reprieve.
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Karachi, Joseph Coutts, wrote asking for a delay, while other senior church officials, including the former Bishop of Rochester in Britain, sent a separate letter appealing for clemency.
“Bahadur has now spent 23 years in prison — more than a life sentence — for a crime that he two witnesses on which his conviction rest now say he is innocent,” the letter says. “To execute Bahadur in these circumstances would be to commit a grave injustice.”
Earlier on Tuesday Shafqat Hussain, sentenced to hang for killing a seven-year-old boy in Karachi in 2004, had a fourth last-minute stay of execution.
Hussain’s supporters say he was a juvenile when the crime was committed and was also tortured into confessing.
In the Masih case, a last-minute plea for clemency from rights groups, church leaders and the JPP fell on deaf ears.
In a moving essay from his condemned cell, published by Britain’s Guardian newspaper a day before his execution, Masih reflected on his life on death row, during which time he received numerous death warrants.
“I doubt there is anything more dreadful than being told that you are going to die, and then sitting in a prison cell just waiting for that moment,” he wrote.
“For many years ─ since I was just 15 years old ─ I have been stranded between life and death. It has been a complete limbo, total uncertainty about the future.”

Reuters / Rana Tanveer, June 10, 2015, LAHORE: Aftab Bahadur Masih was executed in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail early Wednesday morning despite requests from rights groups and church leaders to halt the execution, terming his conviction as flawed.
Masih’s lawyers said he was tortured into confessing to murder, in a case that has prompted concern among rights groups and the United Nations. Aftab Bahadur was sentenced to death for killing three people in 1992 and human rights group Reprieve said two witnesses who said Bahadur was implicated under torture.
At the time, the death penalty could be passed on a 15 year old, but the minimum age was raised to 18 in 2000.
Testimony obtained by torture is also inadmissible.
“Aftab Bahadur was hanged at District Jail Lahore on Wednesday at 4.30 am,” a jail official told on the condition of anonymity as he was not allowed to speak to the media on the issue.
“Before the hanging, he was crying and saying he was innocent.”
The date of birth on Bahadur’s birth certificate and national identity card, June 30, 1977, is not disputed by Pakistani police or the courts.
“Pakistan proceeded with Mr Bahadur’s execution despite his having been sentenced to death when he was a child – in violation of both international and Pakistani law,” Reprieve said.
Aftab insisted he was innocent and said that when he was arrested, the police had asked for a Rs50,000 bribe and said they would let him go if he paid. As a plumber’s apprentice, Aftab said he could not pay.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lifted the moratorium on the death penalty last year, a day after Pakistani Taliban gunmen attacked a school and killed 134 pupils and 19 adults. The killings put pressure on the government to do more to tackle the militant insurgency.
In an essay written from jail and published a day before his hanging, Bahadur, a Christian, repeated his assertion that he was innocent.
“But I do not know whether that will make any difference,” he wrote. “I have not given up hope, though the night is very dark … It would perhaps have been better not to have to think of what the police did to try to get me to confess falsely to this crime.”
In another incident, also at Kot Lakhpat Jail, a murder convict was hanged.
A duty officer at the jail confirmed to media that Tariq, alias, Tara was also executed for the murder of a man named Zahid.
independent.co.uk: An ‘innocent’ man has been hanged in Pakistan this morning after spending 23 years on death row – despite his lawyers battling to introduce new evidence which could have saved him.
Aftab Bahadur Masih, 38, was just 15-years-old when he was ‘forced into confessing to a murder he did not commit’ more than two decades ago, according to human right groups.
Mr Masih’s execution comes days after another man, Shafqat Hussain, was due to be executed for the kidnapping and involuntary murder of a seven-year-old boy – only Mr Hussain’s hanging was reprieved for a fourth time on Monday.
Mr Masih wrote an essay, a day before, which was published in the Guardian. In it, he said: “I have not given up hope, though the night is very dark.
“It would perhaps have been better not to have to think of what the police did to try to get me to confess falsely to this crime.”
Since December of last year, Pakistan has executed over 150 people after lifting a six-year ban on the death penalty.

1 Response to "Pakistani Christian Aftab Bahadur Masih hanged in Lahore"

  1. To be on death row plus a Christian are two things against this poor man in an anti Christ nation. He has gained eternity but God help those all involved in his death penalty.

    ReplyDelete

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