Pakistan hangs man who was a minor when convicted

Lawyers say Aftab Bahadur was tortured into confessing to 1992 murders at age of 15

Pakistani Christian relatives of  Aftab Bahadur Masih mourn beside his body after his execution in Lahore. Pakistan  executed Mr Masih, who rights activists say was wrongly executed and had urged Pakistan to halt his imminent execution just a day before his hanging. Photograph: Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images
Pakistani Christian relatives of Aftab Bahadur Masih mourn beside his body after his execution in Lahore. Pakistan executed Mr Masih, who rights activists say was wrongly executed and had urged Pakistan to halt his imminent execution just a day before his hanging. Photograph: Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images

Pakistan on Wednesday executed a man who was 15 when he was sentenced to death for murder and whose lawyers say was tortured into confessing, 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 implicated Bahadur had since recanted, saying they were tortured.

At the time, the death penalty could be passed on a 15-year-old, but the minimum age was raised to 18 in 2000.

Relatives  mourn beside Aftab Bahadur’s  body after his execution in Lahore. Photograph: Arif Alia/AFP/Getty Images
Relatives mourn beside Aftab Bahadur’s body after his execution in Lahore. Photograph: Arif Alia/AFP/Getty Images
Makhni Bibi (left) and Shahazullah the parents of Shafqat Hussain who is on a death row, showing Hussain’s photograph. Hussain’s family and lawyer said he was 14 years old at the time of crime and trial, which should carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Photograph: Stringer/EPA
Makhni Bibi (left) and Shahazullah the parents of Shafqat Hussain who is on a death row, showing Hussain’s photograph. Hussain’s family and lawyer said he was 14 years old at the time of crime and trial, which should carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Photograph: Stringer/EPA

Testimony obtained by torture is also inadmissible.

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“Aftab Bahadur was hanged at District Jail Lahore on Wednesday at 4.30 am,” a jail official in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore said, declining to be named as he was not authorised 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 30th, 1977, is not disputed by authorities.

“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.

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 Islamist 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.”

On Tuesday, another man, Shafqat Hussain, whose lawyers say was a child when charged with murder and only confessed after being tortured, was handed a reprieve just hours before he was to be executed, the fourth time his death penalty has been stayed.

But the Supreme Court rejected Hussain’s appeal on Wednesday morning.

His lawyers say he was 14 in 2002 when he was burnt with cigarettes and had his fingernails removed until he confessed to killing a child. Authorities say he was 23 when he was sentenced.

Reuters