Karachi: A Pakistani anti-terrorism court (ATC), on Friday rejected appeals by two convicts on the death row, for the cancellation of their execution warrants in view of blood money agreements with the families of their victims.
Convicts Faisal and Afzal were sentenced to death for murdering a man during a robbery in Karachi in 1998. Their death sentence was not being implemented because of an undeclared official ban on hangings in the country.
However, after the restoration of the death sentence in view of the grisly terrorist attacks in Peshawar in which 156 children and staff members of the Army Public School were killed, the death warrants of the two convicts were issued.
The families of the two convicts had filed a case in the Sindh High Court (SHC) pleading that an accord had been reached with the heirs of the murdered man and they had pardoned the two killers.
The SHC referred the case to the trial (ATC) court to weigh the veracity and validity of the agreement among the families of the convicts and the victim.
Nevertheless, the ATC rejected the peace agreement among the families and thus rejected their plea for calling off the black warrant.
Jail officials said they had approached the ATC seeking a new warrants so that the hanging of the two convicts could be executed.
A total of 24 people have now been executed since the government brought back hanging in terror cases amid public outrage over the Taliban massacre at the school as Pakistan has stepped up its fight against militants and terrorists.
The United Nations, the European Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on Pakistan to re-impose its moratorium on the death penalty.
Right campaigners say Pakistan overuses its anti-terrorism laws and courts to prosecute ordinary crimes.
Concerns are also there that death row convicts from cases not related to terrorism could be executed.
