Pakistan hangs three convicts amid criticism

Pakistan hanged three convicted murderers on Wednesday, the same day Amnesty International criticised it for becoming the world’s third most prolific executioner after China and Iran.

Chaudhry Arshad Saeed Arain, a senior prisons official, said the executed men were brothers Mohammad Imran and Mohammad Luqman, convicted over the murder of a man in Islamabad in 1996; and Raheel Ahmad, who gunned down a man in 1994.

• Pakistan unveiled a sweeping plan to curb militancy after Taliban attackers gunned down more than 150 people, most of them children, at an army-run school in Peshawar in December 2014.

• A six-year moratorium on the death penalty was lifted and the constitution amended to allow military courts to try those accused of carrying out attacks.

The number of known executions worldwide rose more than 50 per cent last year to at least 1,634, the highest figure recorded since 1989, Amnesty International said in a report on Wednesday — with the surge largely fuelled by Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
 [AFP -gulfnews.com]
6/4/16
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