Pakistan Executes Man Who Was 15 When Charged With Murder

Shortly before he was put to death, Aftab Bahadur wrote an essay. He spoke of his alienation and loneliness, of the comfort he found in art and poetry, and of the anguish of awaiting execution on death row in Pakistan.

"I doubt there is anything more dreadful than being told that you are going to die, and then sitting in a prison cell just waiting for that moment," he said, according to a text translated from Urdu, and released by Reprieve, a human rights group based in Britain.

"For many years – since I was just 15 years old – I have been stranded between life and death. It has been a complete limbo, total uncertainty about the future," he added.

At 4:30 am Wednesday, as dawn crept across South Asia, all uncertainty ended. After more than two decades in jail, protesting his innocence throughout, Bahadur was led from his cell in Lahore Central Jail and hanged. He was 38.

For human rights groups, church leaders (Bahadur was Christian), his lawyers, and numerous other individuals around the world who'd been lobbying for him be spared, this was a profoundly painful defeat.

Reprieve's founder, the attorney Clive Stafford Smith, a life-long campaigner against capital punishment, said Bahadur's execution left him "in a state of sickening despair."

For the past six months, executions have taken place almost daily in Pakistan. Most generate few headlines. Bahadur's case is an exception, not least because he was so young when he was convicted.

In 1992, Bahadur, a plumber's apprentice, was arrested and charged with the murder in Lahore of a woman and her two sons. Rights lawyers say his conviction was based on testimony coerced from two people. Both subsequently recanted.

At the time, 15 was the age of legal responsibility in Pakistan. In 2000, this was raised to 18. International law prohibits nations from imposing the death penalty on minors; Bahadur's execution violates this, say rights activists.

A few years ago, Pakistan introduced a moratorium on capital punishment. This was lifted last December after the Taliban overran an army-run school in Peshawar, and massacred more than 130 school children. There was public fury and disgust. Resuming executions was part of a package of measures introduced by the government on the promise of wiping out terrorism.

Amnesty International says that Pakistan has since executed at least 157 people.

"I think what we have seen in Pakistan over the last six months is incredibly alarming," said spokesperson Olof Blomqvist, "Pakistan is quickly becoming one of the world's top executioners."