Convicted killer Shafqat Hussain was hanged by Pakistan on Tuesday despite claims that he was under 18 when arrested and was tortured into confessing
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Convicted killer Shafqat Hussain was hanged by Pakistan on Tuesday despite claims that he was under 18 when arrested and was tortured into confessing to a murder.
His family have said he was just 14.
The case sparked an international outcry with Hussain’s lawyers saying school
records showed he was a juvenile in 2004. That is when they claim he was burnt with cigarettes and had fingernails removed until he confessed to killing a child in Karachi.
Despite previous stays of execution, Pakistan insisted Hussein was an adult at the time and could therefore be hanged.
“Shafqat Hussain was this morning executed in Pakistan, despite widespread calls, both within and outside the country, for a stay,” the legal aid group Justice Project Pakistan, which was representing Hussain, said in a statement.
An official at the Karachi Central Jail, where the sentence was carried out, confirmed the execution.
Pakistan has hanged nearly 200 people since December, when a massacre by Taliban militants at an army-run school in Peshawar prompted the government to lift a de facto ban on capital punishment.
Only Iran and China have executed more people than Pakistan this year, according to
human rights group Amnesty International.
The #deathpenalty is never the answer. It doesn't deter crime, it doesn't bring anyone back. #shafqathussain http://t.co/KmqoDWNjDu
— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) August 4, 2015