ATC orders shifting of two death row convicts to Karachi

Karachi
An anti-terrorism court (ATC) on Thursday ordered the authorities to shift two death row convicts from Sukkur to Karachi for execution scheduled for Februrary 3.
The court issued the order on an application filed by Attaullah’s father who had stated that his son and Muhammad Azam were to be hanged at the Karachi Central Jail but were still being detained in Sukkur. He requested the court to suspend the remaining sentence of the two convicts from Sukkur to Karachi.
On January 24, the court had issued the death warrants for both men associated with the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), who were convicted for the murder of Dr Ali Razi Peerani in Soldier Bazaar in June 2001.
The men had appealed the sentence in the Sindh High Court and then the Supreme Court which were both rejected. Their mercy appeals to the president were also refused.
The orders for their execution had initially been issued by the ATC in 2013 but the sentence could not be carried out due to a moratorium on capital punishment. The order was reissued on December 19, 2014, but the heirs of convicts moved a petition in the Sindh High Court against the sentence. The last execution in Karachi was carried out on January 15 was also an LeJ activist, Mohammad Saeed alias Maulvi. He had been found guilty for the murder of DSP (retd) Syed Sabir Hussain Shah and his young son Syed Abid Hussain Shah on sectarian grounds.
An anti-terrorism court had issued black warrants for his execution on January 3, 2014, after the years-long moratorium on death penalty was lifted in the wake of the Peshawar school attack. Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had announced that more than 500 convicted terrorists held in jails across the country would be hanged.
So far, 19 death row prisoners have been executed in the country since Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lifted the moratorium on death penalty on December 17, 2014, a day after the carnage in Peshawar.