Case of twisted facts to get death penalty banned in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Amid reports that the condemned killer Shafqat Hussain’s case has been taken up by some foreign-funded NGOs and international media with twisted facts as part of a campaign to get the death penalty banned in Pakistan, the interior ministry has referred the case to FIA for inquiry.
FIA would inquire into the age controversy of the killer of a seven-year old boy and the related matters but there is no indication of questioning those foreign funded NGOs, which had intentionally used local and international media and even befooled the UN to propagate that the killer was a juvenile when he committed the heinous crime.
In police, jail and court record Shafqat Hussain was 23 years of age at the time of the crime he committed - the fact which has never been contested at any stage by the culprit or any of his representatives at any official or judicial forum. The culprit’s photo taken by the jail authorities in 2004 also show him a grown up man instead of a 14-year old boy.
Geo News staffer Syed Arifeen was accompanying the police raid team along with his cameraman at the time of arrest of the killer in 2004 for ransom and murder. When approached, Arifeens said that Shafqat at the time of arrest never looked like a 14-year old child.
He also confirmed that the 2004 jail picture of Shafqat, which was published in The News a few days back and is also in great circulation on the social media, is true and that was what he appeared at the time of his arrest.
In Arifeen’s view, even otherwise at the time of raid, Shafqat behave like a crook and shrewd criminal as he had tried to trick the police repeatedly but ultimately confessed his crime.The NGOs, media and some local and international so-called rights organisations took up the twisted case of Shafqat Hussain only after December 2014 Peshawar school attack when Pakistan decided to end six-year old moratorium on the death penalty.
It is believed even by the official circles that the whole ‘save Shafqat Hussain campaign’ was launched on the basis of fabricated information but with the motive to pressure Pakistan to re-impose ban on the death penalty.
During the last eleven years, the age factor of the culprit had never been an issue but all of a sudden recently a town committee in AJK issued Shafqat’s birth certificate, which instead of settling the issue raised serious questions about the authenticity and validity of the document.
According to a journalist, who had probed the matter, the birth certificate is also part of the campaigners’ agenda to present distorted facts and pressure the government to get the death penalty banned yet again.
In one of his recent blogs the journalist wrote, “Birth certificate, if obtained much later, has to be substantiated by some records. Records can be birth & death registers, hospital records, midwife records, school entering or leaving records, official examination cards, property documents with dates of birth or Form-B of the pre-NADRA era Registration Authority. In this case, a town committee in Neelum Valley has issued a birth certificate simply on the basis of an affidavit by the family.”
He added, “This battle (of NGOs) that has fooled so many educated Pakistanis was never about ‘innocence’ or mistaken identity. The NGOs never claimed that Shafqat Hussain did not seduce and murder a 7-year old Umair Siddiqui who, if alive, would have been 18 now. What about their child’s right to life? What about their right to seek justice? The NGOs are fighting this case on technical ground that Shafqat Hussain was a juvenile, he was only 14 when convicted. This was nothing but dishonest afterthought to exploit loopholes in the system. Imagine how easy it is to fool people if you dress modern and speak a bit of English that so many people on social media, without seeing any evidence whatsoever of age 14, actually believe that the state of Pakistan has to give an answer on age issue. How come a juvenile of age 14 was tried! To support this contention they have managed to obtain a birth certificate from Neelum Valley.”
Meanwhile documents show that on December 22, 2014, the town committee Kail of district Neelum issued a birth certificate claiming Shafqat to have born on 1-10-1991. A day before the issuance of the certificate one Sumaira bibi, who claimed to be the sister of the killer, got an affidavit that in 2004 she was 15 and that Shafqat was one year younger than her.
After the issuance of the birth certificate, Shafqat’s mother Makhani Begum on January 5, 2015 in her affidavit claimed that her killer son was born one or two years after the birth of her daughter Sumaira. The mother claimed that her daughter is now 25.Besides these affidavits of Shafqat’s family, there is no official document available which may confirm that Shafqat was 14 and not 23 in 2004.
However, it is interesting to note without any verification and ignoring the police, jail and judicial record, a campaign was launched in the national and international media against Pakistan and its policy of death penalty.
Slogans like “Don’t hang child offender” were attractive enough for the west and the so-called human rights organisations to issue serious warning to Pakistan and portray the country negatively in regard to its policy of death penalty.
Such has been the influence of the propaganda that even a UN group got befooled as its “human rights experts” in a statement said, “Mr. Hussain was 14 years old when he was arrested in connection with the disappearance of a young boy.”
The UN group even went to the extent of saying that Shafqat’s confessions were obtained after he was reportedly tortured over nine days by police officers after his arrest in 2004. These so-called human rights experts of the UN neither had the time to go through the court case of the culprit nor knew the basic fact that the dead body of the deceased child was recovered from a nullah on the pointing of the killer.
Anti-Terror Court had awarded him double death penalty. In the Sindh High Court, Shafqat Hussain took the plea that he did not want to kill Umair, he did not have the intention and high court judge accepted that and commuted his death sentence under Section 302 to 5-year imprisonment. However he could not get rid of conviction under 365-A of ATA, which relates to “Abduction for Ransom”.