SARGODHA, Pakistan, Sept. 29 (UPI) — A Pakistani man was hanged for murder Tuesday after being on death row for nearly 20 years, though evidence suggests he was a juvenile at the time of the crime.
Ansar Iqbal was arrested and charged with murder in 1994 and was sentenced to death in 1996. He was hanged at dawn on Tuesday at the District Jail of Sargodha city in the eastern province of Punjab.
Iqbal was arrested with a friend over the murder of a neighbor stemming from an argument at a cricket match, the victim’s family said. Iqbal said police framed him by planting two guns at his home.
Under Pakistani law, those who are underage at the time of an arrest cannot be executed. About 87 percent of Pakistanis are not registered at birth, making it “almost impossible to prove the age of most of the 8,000 prisoners on Pakistan’s death row,” Reprieve, a human rights group based in Britain, said in a statement.
Reprieve appealed to Pakistani authorities to spare Iqbal because of evidence stating he was a juvenile at the time of his arrest.
“All the documentary evidence provided to the courts during his trial or appeal indicates that he was a child at the time of the alleged offence; however, the courts have chosen to believe the estimate of police officers that he was in his 20s,” Reprieve said in a statement.
Court officials refused to look at Iqbal’s school records and birth certificate, which said he was 14 and 15 respectively at the time of the murder. The court said the documents were submitted too late.
“The Pakistani authorities have today executed a man who all the evidence suggested was a child at the time of the alleged offense,” Maya Foa, head of the death penalty team at Reprieve, said in a statement. “The government has therefore committed a shocking breach of Pakistani and international law and it is shameful that, when Iqbal’s life was at stake, the Supreme Court of Pakistan refused to consider critical evidence of juvenility.”
“Before any more prisoners are sent to the gallows, the international community must condemn Iqbal’s execution in the strongest terms, and urge Pakistan to bring this brutal wave of hangings to a halt,” Foa concluded.
Pakistan has executed at least 239 people since lifting a moratorium on the death penalty in December.
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