Pakistan third most prolific executioner: rights group

Islamabad: For the second year in a row, Pakistan has retained its "notorious status" of being the "third most prolific executioner" in the world, executing 419 people in two years, a rights group said on Sunday.

Sarah Belal, Executive Director of Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), said in a statement that it has been two years since the tragic terrorist attack on the students of the army-run school in Peshawar in 2014 that killed 154 people, mostly students, prompting Pakistan to lift the six-year moratorium on death sentences.

She said that so far Pakistan has executed 419 death row prisoners convicted for terrorism and other crimes since re-starting executions.

"Pakistan has retained its notorious status of being the third most prolific executioner in the world, two years in a row," she said.

According to Amnesty International, at least 1,634 people were executed in 25 countries in 2015.

Out of these, most of the executions took place in China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the USA in that order, it said.

Belal said that "no amount of commiseration or time can ever mitigate the horror" of the Peshawar attack but executions may not be the right way to deal with it.

"An analysis of the 419 executions that have occurred so far reveals significant flaws in that narrative," she said.

"According to data collected by Justice Project Pakistan, only 16 per cent of the executions carried out since December 2014 were related to terrorism charges," she said, adding that the remainder included several cases of wrongful execution such as juveniles, the mentally ill and the physically disabled, all of which are expressly forbidden in light of Pakistan's international legal obligations.

Belal said this figure is even more problematic when considering that in as many as 88 per cent of "terrorism" cases, there was no link to a terrorist organisation or anything that can reasonably be defined as terrorism.

"It is a dishonour to the memory of the attack victims for the state to take lives in their name, when they have no bearing on curbing the menace that caused their deaths," she said.

She said that under Pakistani law, 27 crimes carry the death sentence and an average of 258 death sentences have been imposed yearly from 2007 to 2015, explaining why the country has the highest number of death row convicts in the world.

Given these statistics, it is clear that Pakistan does not reserve the death penalty for 'the most serious crimes' as required by the international law, she said.

Belal urged authorities to revamp and reform Pakistan's criminal justice system to make it more transparent.