Libya: Evidence of New Cluster Bomb Use

Pakistani authorities should immediately halt the execution of an alleged child offender scheduled for March 19, 2015, and commute his sentence, Human Rights Watch said today.

On March 12, an anti-terrorism court in Karachi approved the execution of Shafqat Hussain, who was allegedly 14 or 15 years old when sentenced in 2004 for kidnapping and killing a 7-year-old boy. The court approved Hussain's execution despite allegations that security forces in Sindh province had tortured Hussain into confessing to the crime.

"Executing child offenders is a barbarous violation of basic decency and international law," said Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director. "Sending someone to the gallows for an alleged crime committed as a child shows the Pakistani government's disregard for 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. Sharif's decision has led to more than 20 executions of people convicted of terrorism-related charges. On March 10, the Interior Ministry officials confirmed that Pakistan's Ministry of Interior had lifted its death penalty moratorium for all capital crimes and instructed provincial governments to proceed with executions according to law.

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. In July 2000, Pakistan issued an ordinance banning the death penalty for crimes by people under 18. However, the ordinance requires the existence of dedicated juvenile courts and other mechanisms not provided for by law in all parts of Pakistan, leaving juvenile offenders at risk of trial as adults in capital cases. Human Rights Watch recognizes that children should be held accountable for murder and other serious crimes. However, courts should take into account the ways that young people are different from adults, including that they are both less culpable and also uniquely capable of rehabilitation.

Human Rights Watch could last confirm Pakistan's execution of an alleged child offender on June 13, 2006, when authorities in Peshawar hanged Mutabar Khan. A trial court in Swabi had sentenced Khan to death on October 6, 1998, for the alleged murder of five people in April 1996. During his appeal, Khan provided the court with a school-leaving certificate to support his claim that he was 16 at the time of the killings, and contended that authorities knew he was a child because they held him in the juvenile wing of the Peshawar Central Prison for two years. Since Khan's execution, only five other places are known to have executed people for crimes committed as children: Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Hamas authorities in Gaza.

Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as an inherently irreversible, inhumane punishment. Human rights law requires adherence to the right to a fair trial and limits the death penalty to "the most serious crimes," typically crimes resulting in death or grievous bodily harm. Pakistan should join with the many countries already committed to the UN General Assembly's December 18, 2007 resolution calling for a moratorium on executions and a move by UN member countries toward abolition of the death penalty.

"Pakistan's president should immediately commute Shafqat Hussein's execution and prevent a serious human rights violation," Kine said. "Above all, Pakistan's government should reaffirm its commitments to fundamental human rights and the rights of children by explicitly rejecting the odious practice of executing child offenders."