FAISALABAD/JHANG/LAHORE: As many as eleven more convicts were hanged at various prisons of Punjab on Wednesday taking the number of executions over the past two days to 23. President Mamnoon Hussain stayed the execution of Shafqat Hussain to investigate whether he was under age when he committed his crime. Meanwhile, the sentences of two prisoners have been stayed. The latest round in Punjab brings to 50 the total number of convicts hanged since the government resumed capital punishment in December after the Peshawar school attack. The partial lifting of the moratorium, which began in 2008, only applied to those convicted of terrorism offences, but was last week extended to all capital offences. In Faisalabad, Saeed Ahmad and Shafqat Ali were hanged at the district jail. They had been awarded the death penalty by a district court over a double murder committed on March 23, 1998 in Nankana Sahib. However, the execution of Ahsan Ilyas was stayed after his family submitted a settlement deal. Ahsan killed a policeman in the Tandlianwala area.Similarly, two more death row prisoners were executed at District Jail Jhang. One of them, Ghulam Muhammad, had killed his brother-in-law, Mustafa in 2000 over a family dispute, with Zakir Hussain killing Zulfiqar over the custodianship of a shrine in 1998. In Rawalpindi, two death row inmates — Shaukat and Muhammad Shabbir — were hanged for murdering a person over enmity. But the hanging of Qadeer Ahmed was postponed as the two sides struck a settlement. A murder convict, Tahir Bashir, was also hanged at Kot Lakhpat Jail, Lahore. He had shot dead Arshad Ali in Sabzazar over a minor dispute in 2000. It was the first execution of a death row prisoner in Lahore in a case not involving terrorism charges after the government lifted the moratorium on the death penalty. Also, Asad Khan, who shot dead three people including a woman in Khushab over a marriage dispute in 2002, was executed in Attock.Another killer Ahmed Nawaz of Chakrala was executed at Mianwali’s Central Jail. He had been sentenced to death for killing a person in 1998. Meanwhile, execution of another convicted person, Shafqat Hussain, set to be executed on Thursday (today) at Karachi jail, was delayed for an indefinite period after Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali appealed to the president to review the death penalty. Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon had also appealed to President Mamnoon Hussain to review his decision on the mercy petition of condemned prisoner, Shafqat Hussain.Meanwhile, the execution of Mandi Bahauddin’s Azhar Abbas was also stayed in Gujrat jail.
