Pakistan's government should immediately halt the apparent pending execution of an alleged child offender and commute his sentence, Human Rights Watch said today.
News reports suggest that Shafqat Hussain, who was 14 or 15 when sentenced in 2004 for kidnapping and killing a seven-year-old boy, is among the several hundred prisoners facing imminent execution in Pakistan.
The United Kingdom-based human rights organization Reprieve issued a statement alleging that security forces in Pakistan's Sindh province had tortured Hussain into confessing to the crime.
"Sending child offenders to the gallows is a monstrous government response to the vicious Peshawar school attack," said Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
Kline added, "The government's apparent aim to execute someone for crimes allegedly committed as a child is an affront to basic decency, as well as a violation of children's rights."
Hussain's looming execution follows the government's decision on December 16, 2014 to rescind a four year unofficial death penalty moratorium for non-military personnel "in terrorism related cases."
That decision was an explicit government reaction to the December 16 attack by the Pakistani Taliban splinter group Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) on a school in Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan that left at least 148 dead-almost all children.
The Pakistan government has already executed six convicted militants in Punjab province on December 19 and 21, 2014 as part of its announced policy to speed execution of death row inmates.
Pakistan has ratified both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which specifically prohibit capital punishment of anyone who was under 18 at the time of the offense. The prohibition is absolute.
