[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 3



PAKISTAN:

Death Penalty For The Disabled


Pakistan has executed more than 200 people since the reintroducing the death 
penalty in December 2014. At the time it was a measure to combat terrorism, 
after the massacre of almost 150 people in a Peshawar school. However, that 
seems to be long forgotten. Now the death penalty is focusing on rampantly 
clearing out jails- targeting the mentally ill and disabled as well.

Pakistan's jail manual gives no instructions on how to execute disabled 
prisoners. One of the most recent cases of Abdul Basit, a prisoner who was 
paralyzed from the waist down after an illness he contracted in prison. He was 
convicted 6 years ago of murder but maintains his innocence. Prison officials 
have missed Tuesday's court deadline to explain how they would hang a 
paraplegic man, because of which his hanging in Lahore was postponed last 
month. A petition for his pardon has also been dismissed.

Executions of the mentally ill violate the right to human dignity under the 
Constitution, and are an affront to Pakistan's obligations under international 
law. Additionally, Section 84 of the Pakistan Penal Code does not allow the 
state to punish any person suffering from a "disorder of his mental 
capabilities" The fact that officials are prepared to hang Basit, despite 
knowing this, shows they are even prepared to bend Pakistan's law to breaking 
point.

Basit is not the only one. Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), a non- profit human 
rights law firm providing direct pro-bono legal and representative services to 
the most vulnerable prisoners in our system have appealed many cases just like 
his. Zainab Malik, a project manager at JPP, said to the Nation that the trial 
is a repeated script of a lack of diligence by trial courts, procedural 
oversight, records that suddenly go missing and incompetent legal 
representation. Whilst the wealthy and influential escape through the 
loopholes, "the poor, mentally ill, powerless and members of religious 
minorities are rushed to the gallows".

Mentally ill prisoners are stuffed in Pakistan death row cells alongside other 
inmates. These death row cells, measuring 8 by 12 feet, designed to house not 
more than 2 prisoners at a time. They currently hold on average 6 or more 
prisoners for over 23 hours a day. Whilst the Medical Health Ordinance was 
enacted in 2001 to provide protection and treatment to mentally ill prisoners 
the law receives little or no implementation nation-wide.

Pakistan has the world's largest number of death row inmates, with more than 
8,000 people reported to be awaiting execution, and it is on course to have one 
of the highest rates of executions in the world. The current government should 
revisit the moratorium over the death penalty to put a stop to a blatant 
violation of human rights.

(source: Editorial, The Nation)

*******************

Pakistan's Bid to Hang a Disabled Man


For 31 years, I have been a witness to various governments' efforts to execute 
people in a variety of ways. The bizarre nature of this barbaric debate 
continued apace on Monday, as a judge in Pakistan faced the government's demand 
for a date on the gallows for Abdul Basit, a condemned man rendered paraplegic 
some years ago when the prison failed to provide him with treatment for 
tubercular meningitis.

The judge appeared sympathetic to the argument that it would be simply barbaric 
to hang a man in a wheelchair, but the prosecution lawyer was vehement in his 
desire that Abdul Basit should swing. If a man in a wheelchair killed a score 
of people, he demanded, would he be spared the noose? (Conveniently, he ignored 
the fact that Abdul Basit was put into his wheelchair by the very prison 
authorities who were charged with treating him humanely.)

Faced with a barrage of venom, the judge turned to the prison authorities: 
precisely how, he demanded, did they plan to hang Abdul Basit? The jailers 
muttered and stuttered, but eventually conceded that they had not yet figured 
this one out. The judge ordered them to return within 24 hours with a plan. 
None was forthcoming.

One might think that the most vengeful of governments would accept that Abdul 
Basit has suffered enough, whether he committed the crime or not. While he has 
been on death row for a decade (itself a dreadful punishment), he has come 
within hours of execution twice already this summer (which verges on torture), 
and his volunteer lawyers have had no time to investigate any claims of 
innocence, given the arguments over how the noose should be applied.

In the meantime he has been paralysed from the waist down, with creeping loss 
of his upper body movement. He has lost all sphincter control. He cannot walk 
even a brief distance. He cannot climb the steps to the gallows. He cannot 
stand on the trapdoor, with the noose around his neck, to await his death.

Back in the day - when Britain killed people who we thought had killed people 
to show that killing people was wrong - the notorious hangman Albert 
Pierrepoint would come in to measure the condemned man's neck, and weigh him, 
to calculate the distance of a final drop that would break his neck without 
wrenching the head from the torso. It was a strange and sickening science that 
ultimately led Pierrepoint to declare his opposition to capital punishment.

It is rather chilling to imagine what will be taking place in the coming days, 
as Pierrepoint's Pakistani descendants ponder how best to kill this man. They 
will presumably be pulling out their paraplegia charts, factoring in the weight 
of his wheelchair, and wondering how best to roll Abdul Basit into place, all 
in the name of justice. Let us hope that sanity prevails.

(source: Clive Stafford Smith; US lawyer and the founder and director of human 
rights organization Reprieve)