Hanging a paraplegic convict has turned into a predicament for police officials, who are perplexed as to how to execute him without violating any laws.Abdul Basit, 43, was scheduled to be hanged at dawn on Tuesday. But when the jail superintendent, the judicial magistrate and the medical officer appointed to oversee the execution realised that they could not keep the convict standing long enough, the hanging was suspended The moratorium on the death penalty was cancelled in the wake of the Army Public School massacre last December. As of June 2015, there are around 1,500 people on death row, about 1,000 of whom have had their appeals rejected. Far from the current round of executions being of those described as ‘hardened terrorists’, the majority executed thus far have been ‘ordinary’ criminals, unconnected to terrorism in any way. Many of those executed were convicted many years ago in circumstances that may suggest that there was a miscarriage of justice, so flawed were their trials. It is not inconceivable that completely innocent people have been hanged to death. The death penalty offers no deterrent to terrorists anyway, who for the most part welcome ‘martyrdom’. While the reprieve to Basit’s life has led to a momentary calm, he is by no means off the hook, as officially the delay is only due to the bureaucrats struggling to come up with a procedure to execute him in a legal way. Principled arguments that it is criminal to execute handicapped people who pose no threat to society still fall on deaf ears, as do pragmatic concerns about avoiding ruining Pakistan’s global image further. The only permanent relief for Basit would be if the appeal by his lawyers to President Mamnoon Hussain to grant him a presidential pardon is accepted. But the president, who is busy engaging in an unconstitutional bout of politicking by organising a local government election campaign for his erstwhile political party, is nowhere to be found on the scene to perform his constitutional role. While it is hoped that the president does intervene to save Abdul Basit’s family further heartache and trauma, the fact that a paraplegic man is still facing the possibility of death at the hand of the state has exposed the unmitigated humanitarian disaster of lifting the death penalty moratorium. One wonders how many other instances of flagrant human rights violation take place away from the public’s eye. It is to the credit of Basit’s lawyers and the human rights community that they have brought out such injustices in the open.
pk.shafaqna.com
