Islamabad, April 28 (IANS) Pakistan hanged another death row convict on Tuesday taking to 100 the number of convicts hanged since a moratorium on capital punishment was lifted in December last year.
Amnesty International denounced the execution as a “shameful milestone”.
Munir Hussain, who was sentenced to death in a double-murder case became the 100th person to be executed. The sentence was carried out in the eastern province of Punjab.
“In reaching this shameful milestone of 100 executions in just over four months, the Pakistani authorities are showing total disregard for human life,” EFE news agency quoted David Griffiths, Amnesty’s Asia Pacific deputy director as saying in London.
Pakistan had imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in 2008 but lifted it after Tehreek-e-Taliban terrorists killed over 140 children and staff of a school in Peshawar city of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on December 16, 2014.
“Serious crimes like murder and acts of terrorism are utterly reprehensible but killing people in the name of justice is not a particular deterrent,” Griffiths expounded, advising instead that “those who carry out crimes must be prosecuted in fair trials, but without resort to the death penalty”.
According to human rights organisations, there are about 8,000 death row inmates in Pakistani prisons.
The death penalty can be imposed upon conviction of 28 crimes which include — besides terrorist activities — murder, rape and blasphemy.