Two decades after he was convicted, and despite allegations that his confession was forced, Aftab Bahadur was hanged in Lahore

Pakistan ignored protests against the execution of a man on Wednesday who was a child at the time of his conviction, while the country’s supreme court rejected a last-minute appeal for another man whose plight has attracted global support.

Aftab Bahadur, a 38-year-old Christian who spent 22 years on death row, was hanged in the early hours despite pleas from international human rights groups and church leaders.



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They had argued that as he was just 15 at the time he was convicted of murdering three people he should not have been eligible for capital punishment. At the time of his conviction in 1992 it was legal to sentence him to death, although the age was raised to 18 in 2000.



An official at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail said Bahadur protested his innocence until the end. “With tears in his eyes he was asking for mercy and repeating again and again that he was innocent,” the official said.

He was among 150 convicts who have been executed in Pakistan since the country abandoned a moratorium on capital punishment following the Pakistani Taliban massacre of school children in the city of Peshawar in December.

In an article published this week in the Guardian, Bahadur had written of the “overriding sense of horror” among men on death row when the government decided to resume executions.



“While the death penalty moratorium was ended on the pretext of killing terrorists, most of the people here in Kot Lakhpat are charged with regular crimes,” he wrote. “Quite how killing them is going to stop the sectarian violence in this country, I cannot say.”

Senior members of Pakistan’s small Christian community had lobbied for mercy, with Karachi’s Roman Catholic bishop appealing to the president to delay the execution and order a new investigation.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Relatives of Aftab Bahadur protest against his death sentence. Photograph: Rahat Dar/EPA

His lawyers claim Bahadur was tortured by police into confessing to having killed a woman called Sabiha Baria and her two sons.



Two eyewitnesses in the case later retracted their testimony which they claimed they gave under torture, human rights group Reprieve has said.

“If a fair trial had taken place I am sure Bahadur would never have confessed,” said Bahadur’s brother Babar. “The police made him accept the charges through brutal torture in the jail.”

Maya Foa, head of the death penalty team at Reprieve, said Bahadur’s hanging was “a truly shameful day for Pakistan’s justice system”.

A truly shameful day for Pakistan’s justice system Maya Foa, Reprieve

“To the last, Pakistan refused even to grant his lawyers the few days needed to present evidence which would have proved his innocence,” Foa said. “This is a travesty of justice, and tragedy for all those who knew Aftab.”

Pakistan has the world’s largest number of people on death row and a criminal justice system regularly criticised for corruption and for failing to provide fair trials.

Shortly after Bahadur’s execution on Wednesday, Pakistan’s supreme court rejected an appeal over the case of Shafqat Hussain, a death row prisoner who received a last minute stay to his scheduled execution the day before.

Successive judges have refused to accept the arguments of Hussain’s lawyers that he was a child at the time of the killing of a boy called Umair in Karachi in 2004.

Neither have the courts been swayed by claims he only confessed to the killing after police burned him with cigarettes and pulled out his fingernails.

Despite the high-profile campaign, which has attracted the support of top EU diplomats in Pakistan and senior UN human rights officials, Hussain’s death sentence has been upheld by every court.

Sorry, the petition is dismissed. This matter has to come to an end someday Chief Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk

In disposing of the appeal the supreme court said it refused to reopen the issue of his age. “Sorry, the petition is dismissed. This matter has to come to an end someday,” said Nasir-ul-Mulk, chief justice and head of the three-judge panel.

“This court has already dismissed the plea regarding age. For the court, the case has already been closed when the review petition was dismissed.”

The Islamabad high court had earlier rejected a request for a judicial inquiry into Hussain’s age. The judge said no evidence had been produced that showed he was a minor at the time of the murder.

Reprieve argued an official inquiry into Hussain’s age by the Federal Investigation Agency relied “almost exclusively on an incorrect trial record” and ignored his school record which showed him to be under the age of 18.

At least 150 people have been executed in recent months according to Amnesty International, saying that “Pakistan is fast turning into one of the world’s top executioners”.



“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.

Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister, 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.