Share:

AMRAIZ KHAN/Agencies

LAHORE - Authorities in Faisalabad on Sunday executed four more convicts involved in a deadly attack on former military ruler General (r) Pervez Musharraf.

Two terrorists, also involved in a murder attempt on the former president and an attack on Army GHQ in Rawalpindi, were hanged on Friday in the same jail.

The executions come after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ended a six-year moratorium on the death penalty following a Taliban attack on a cadet school in Peshawar that killed 149 people, sparking shock, terror and range across the country.

Official sources said more convicted militants would be executed in coming days, some of them in Lahore, the power base of ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz. The interior ministry has reportedly prepared a list of 17 convicts who too would be hanged soon.

A senior jail officer told The Nation that they received death warrants the for four convicts and they were executed accordingly. “Ghulam Sarwar (belonging to Rawalpindi), Rashid Mehmood Qureshi ails Tipu, Zubair Ahmed (belonging to Lodhran) and Akhlaq Ahmed, also known as Roosi (who was a Russian citizen), have been hanged,” said another prison official in Faisalabad.

All four terrorists were shifted to the death cell of District Jail Faisalabad on late Saturday from Central Jail Faisalabad under tight security arrangements made by personnel of a law enforcement agency, police, Rangers and the Army, the jail authorities said.

As per state run TV Rashid Mehmood Qureshi and Ghulam Sarwar Bhaati were hanged at 3:25pm while Akhlaq Roosi and Zubair Ahmad at 4:25pm. Their family members were allowed to have final meetings with them. After execution, the bodies were handed over to the heirs.

As per jail officials death warrants of more terrorists have been issued and they would be hanged this week. Jail rules and regulations have also been amended and now a convict can be hanged on any day of the week. To thwart any attack bid on part of the terrorists, security was beefed up in and around the Faisalabad jail.

The first hangings came on Friday when Dr Usman and Arshad Mehmood were executed in the same jail. The death warrants of all the six executed men were signed just a day earlier after the under pressure government lifted ban on death sentences in terrorism related cases as the nation mourned unprecedented and gruesome massacre of innocent schoolchildren and staff by a band of brutes.

Among those hanged on Sunday was Ghulam Sarwar, who had served in Pakistan Air Force (PAF), while Rashid Mehmood Qureshi was also a son of a retired Pakistan Air Force officer. Akhlaq Roosi, 34, was a Russian citizen, who was born in the city of Volgograd to a Russian mother and a Pakistani father.

Roosi came to Pakistan in 2001 and was one of the men arrested following a suicide attack on General Musharraf’s convoy on December 25, 2003. In the assassination attempt, two suicide bombers tried to ram explosives-laden vehicles into the president’s limousine. The president remained unhurt, but 17 other people were killed in the attack.

According to a private TV channel, Pakistan turned down a request from the Russian government to postpone the death sentence of its citizen Akhlaq Ahmed. “Russia repeatedly approached Pakistani authorities with a plea to reconsider the sentence for Akhlaq,” said a statement issued on Sunday from the Russian embassy in Islamabad.

In the face of world pressure against country’s step to restore executions, the going of authorities for hanging the culprits of attack on former army chief first is significant. Interestingly, he is the man who had sent packing PM Sharif’s government in 1999 military coup and is facing treason trial for the same.

It was also Gen Musharraf who had led Pakistan to join the war against Taliban, though most of his countrymen those days believed it was America’s war. Now that after years of confusion and terrorism they are convinced it is in fact their own war, the execution of Musharraf attackers coming first of all is in a way tribute to the services of that man with whom they have been having a love-hate relationship.