Pakistan hangs over 300 convicts within a year
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Pakistan hangs over 300 convicts within a year

Pakistan hangs over 300 convicts within a year

di lettura
(AGI) - Karachi, 2 dec. - Pakistan hanged four more death rowconvicts on Wednesday taking the overall tally to cross 300since the moratorium on capital punishment has been lifted. Thelatest men hanged were blamed for carrying out terrorist attackon a school killing over 150, mostly children. A brazenmilitant attack on an army-run school last December has changedthe course of anti-terrorism measures in Pakistan. More than150 people, mostly children were killed in the Army PublicSchool on December 16 when a group of Taliban entered theschool in the north western Peshawar city shootingindiscriminately. Since then, moratorium on capital punishmenthas been lifted, military courts set-up and the security forcesgranted more powers. On monday, Chief of Army Staff Raheel Sharif had signed thedeath warrants of the four convicted terrorists. The convictswere charged for collecting funds, harbouring and transporting10 suicide bombers for the attack. Rights groups like theAmnesty International and the European Union have long beenurging Pakistan to hold the capital punishment-spree."Pakistan's ongoing zeal for executions is an affront to humanrights and the global trend against the death penalty", DavidGriffiths, South Asia Research Director at AI said in astatement last two weeks ago. The group had recorded 299executions till the last week of november, based onpublicly-reported figures. Forty-five were recorded in October2015 alone, the deadliest month since the moratorium onexecutions was lifted. A majority of those executed so far werenot convicted of offences related to terrorism, even though itwas a Taliban massacre - of mostly schoolchildren in Peshawarlast December - that prompted the authorities to lift themoratorium in place since 2008. (AGI).
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