Pakistan

Pakistan: Accountability and Conviction of Perpetrators to Achieve Justice for Victim Survivors, Not The Death Penalty

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Pakistan: Accountability and Conviction of Perpetrators to Achieve Justice for Victim Survivors, Not The Death Penalty

November 27, 2020, Statements

Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN) expresses its deepest concern over the recent  announcement of the government of Pakistan to introduce the death penalty as a mean to  address the rising incidents of rape and child sexual abuse in the country.  

The debate around the use of public execution and castration of offenders in the wake of violence  against women and children suggests the willful ignorance of the state of its international  obligations under various human rights treaties that it has ratified. The narrative adopted by the  state can be seen as an attempt to deflect public scrutiny of the state’s failure in protecting  victim-survivor of sexual offences and the criminal justice system that is unable to achieve justice  against perpetrators 

ADPAN believes that the death penalty is cruel, inhuman and against all norms of civility. The  punishment has also failed to show any effectiveness in deterring future crimes. Pakistan’s  continued and unabated use of death penalty in the past echoes the global trend where it is not  the severity but the certainty of punishment that reduces crime in society. 

Pakistan penal code is already replete with more than 27 offences that carry the death penalty  and prescribing the death penalty for yet another offence will not deter and prevent future  crimes. Introduction of the death penalty to sexual offences will only violate international human  rights and it will not bring justice to the victim-survivors. 

ADPAN calls upon Pakistan to learn and adopt the studies conducted globally on the application  of the death penalty and its futility. ADPAN reiterate the global call for Pakistan to impose an  immediate moratorium on the use of the death penalty for all offences in the country.  

ADPAN also urge Pakistan to introduce widespread educational reform and improvement to the criminal justice system as part of its policy agenda to protect and respect the rights of women  and children in the country.

Pakistan: Accountability and Conviction of Perpetrators to Achieve Justice for Victim Survivors, Not The Death Penalty
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Aftab Bahadur: Child offender executed in Pakistan

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Aftab Bahadur: Child offender executed in Pakistan

“The police tortured me and then after smearing my hands with oil, put those hands around the room and thus the impressions were obtained,” Aftab Bahadur. 

Aftab Bahadur was arrested by police in Lahore on 5 September 1992 along with another man, suspected of murder.He was held in police detention for several months without access to a lawyer. Detainees in Pakistan are often held in police custody for weeks at a time and sometimes up to a year while charges are prepared. They are rarely given the chance to challenge the lawfulness of their detention before a court or seek bail. 

When Aftab Bahadur finally appeared in court in 1993, he pleaded not guilty, claiming that police had taken him to the scene of the crime and forced him to leave fingerprints. His co-defendant also claimed that he had been tortured and forced to leave fingerprints. The judge noted their claims without comment. 

Aftab Bahadur was provided with a state-appointed lawyer at trial who failed to produce any evidence or witnesses in defence of his client. State-appointed lawyers in Pakistan are often poorly trained, and may not represent their clients vigorously unless given further payments by the defendant or their family. 

Aftab Bahadur was tried before the Special Court for Speedy Trials No.2 in Lahore on 13 April 1993, convicted of murder and sentenced to death. These courts operated between 1987 and 1994 with exclusive jurisdiction over certain scheduled offences including murder and political offences – including non-violent offences – for which the death sentence could be imposed. They operated outside the regular legal system, were presided over by retired judges and allowed for appeals only to a Special Supreme Appellate Court, again outside the ordinary Supreme Court bench. Strict time limits were placed on bringing cases to trial after charges had been filed, length of hearings, and the appeal process. Although the law establishing these speedy courts was repealed in 1994 a number of people remain imprisoned following trials in these courts, some of them like Aftab Bahadur, under sentence of death.

As Aftab was aged 15 at the time of arrest – a child offender –  his death sentence was in violation of both Pakistani and international law.

Aftab Bahadur appealed against his conviction to the Supreme Appellate Court. A lawyer was again appointed by the state to represent him. His appeal application is not dated and contains simply four generic points made on one sheet of paper: that the prosecution failed to establish his guilt beyond reasonable doubt; that there was insufficient reliable evidence to convict him; that he is innocent; and that the trial court judgement was arbitrary and based on conjecture. The appeal court confirmed the conviction and sentence on 27 March 1994. A mercy petition to the President was filed by Aftab Bahadur in 2010. He was detained in a Lahore jail. 

UPDATE: 

Sadly Aftab was executed on 10 June 2015 after spending almost 23 years on death row. His case had caused international condemnation with over 18,000 messages sent to the President of Pakistan in support of Aftab. In the days preceding his execution, Aftab wrote of his life on death row; “I just received my Black Warrant. It says I will be hanged by the neck until dead on Wednesday, 10 June. I am innocent, but I do not know whether that will make any difference. During my last 22 years of my imprisonment, I have received death warrants many times. It is strange, but I cannot even tell you how many times I have been told that I am about to die”. (hyperlink to  (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/09/22-years-pakistan-death-row-what-purpose-execution)

ADPAN: When Justice Fails – Thousands executed in Asia after unfair trials, (2011), p33-34 (https://adpandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/adpan-unfair-trials-asa-010232100-final-pdf.pdf),

https://reprieve.org/cases/aftab-bahadur/ 

Aftab Bahadur: Child offender executed in Pakistan
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29 years on death row, Pakistan woman suffers mental illness

29 years on death row, Pakistan woman suffers mental illness

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KATHY GANNON Associated Press 10 April 2020

FILE – In this July 8, 2006 file photo, women prisoners celebrate the news of their release on bail, at Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Kanizan Bibi, charged with murdering her employer’s wife and five children, remains a prisoner on death row for the last 29 years. She’s one of more than 600 mentally ill prisoners in Pakistan’s overcrowded prisons. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed,file)

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Kanizan Bibi was 16 when she was charged with murdering her employer’s wife and five children. The police said she was having an affair with her employer, who was also arrested and later hanged.

Until his execution in 2003, Khan Mohammad swore he and Bibi had never had an affair and had not killed anyone. He maintained his wife and children were killed as payback in a long-running land dispute with his relatives.

Yet Bibi, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2000, remains on death row, where she has been for 29 years.

The Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide is spearheading efforts along with the independent Justice Project Pakistan to get Bibi released. But the coronavirus pandemic that has shut down most of Pakistan seems to have also shut down Bibi’s chance at freedom.

She’s one of more than 600 mentally ill prisoners in Pakistan’s overcrowded prisons. A March 30 hearing to present yet another psychiatric evaluation was postponed when courts closed.

Most days Bibi can barely dress herself. She hasn’t spoken in more than a decade and her father, before he died in 2016 pleaded in a letter to Pakistan’s president to free his only child.

“My daughter was accused of murder, which was a lie,” he wrote telling of how she was tortured in police custody.

“They hung her from a fan with ropes thicker than her tiny wrists, beating her small frame with all their might. They let mice loose in her pants, which they tied from the ankles so that they could not escape. Kanizan had been terrified of mice her whole life,” he wrote. “I am a poor man and I beg that the death sentence of my daughter be converted into life in prison.”

He never received a reply.

Justice Project Pakistan this week warned of a steep rise in COVID-19 cases in Pakistan’s crowded jails. The Supreme Court of Pakistan this week agreed to release some mentally ill and disabled prisoners to ease conditions, but only those whose sentences are less than three years.

That meant Bibi had to remain in prison.

A land dispute between relatives was at the center of her case. Her employer’s cousins had been feuding with him over land and had originally been arrested for the murders. They pointed to Bibi and accused her of adultery, a crime of shame in conservative Pakistan, saying that’s why she killed her employer’s wife and children. In villages adultery can bring summary executions by family members.

Bibi was accused of involvement in the killings and charged with murder. Unsubstantiated adultery claims and a confession elicited after days of torture were enough for the judge to sentence her to death.

Delphine Lourtau, who heads the Cornell Center on Death Penalty Worldwide said the group’s research showed that women often aren’t just punished for crimes they are being charged with “but also for transgressing gender norms.”

Lourtau said three decades on death row have taken a severe toll on Bibi.

“She has lost touch with reality and is oblivious to her surroundings. There are days when she is unable to eat or dress herself. She trembles, hears voices, and is rarely able to recognize family members,” the Cornell Center said.

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This story has been corrected to show that the employer’s name was Khan Mohammad, not Sher Mohammad. – Yahoo News, 10/4/2020