PAKISTAN: TWO KILLER ROBBERS HANGED IN MIRPUR

February 13, 2015: two death row prisoners were executed in the Central Jail of Mirpur, in Pakistan’s Azad Jammu and Kashmir State.
Muhammad Riaz and Mohammad Fayaz were sentenced to death for killing the son of Fazal Rabbani, the Advocate General of Azad Kashmir, in 2004 during a robbery at his home in Mirpur.
The last time anyone was hanged in the prison was a decade back in 2004.
The two convicts held the last meeting with their respective families, prior to the executions. The bodies of the convicts were handed over to their respective families after the execution.
The two were initially sentenced to ten years imprisonment and a fine was imposed, but the victim’s family pursued the matter in the AJK Federal Shariat Court which enhanced the punishment to death penalty in November 2005.
The appeals of the prisoners, challenging their punishment, were rejected by the Azad Kashmir Supreme Court in June 2006. AJK’s then president Raja Zulqarnain Khan had rejected in October 2010 the mercy appeals filed by convicts.
The black warrants of the condemned prisoners were initially issued in December 2012 following which AJK President Sardar Yaqoob Khan had given the convicts a 10-day reprieve so that they could attempt to strike a deal with the family of the deceased.
In January 2013, black warrants were issued for the second time, but the executions were again held in abeyance by acting President Sardar Ghulam Sadiq, citing the moratorium on capital punishment in Pakistan, which was lifted in December 2014 following the Taliban-perpetrated massacre at a military-run school in Peshawar in which 150 people, including 134 children, were killed. (Sources: breakingnewspak.com, 13/02/2015)