Jadhav will not be executed until mercy pleas exhausted: Pak

ISLAMABAD: Days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stayed Kulbhushan Jadhav’s death sentence, Pakistan said on Thursday that the Indian national would not be executed until he has exhausted his mercy appeals.

Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria released a statement which he claimed was aimed at addressing “certain misrepresentations/false statements/allegations” made in the Indian media following the ICJ’s provisional measures order of May 18 in the Jadhav case.

Zakaria asserted that irrespective of the ICJ’s stay, Jadhav would remain alive, until he has exhausted the right to request for clemency, initially with the Chief of the Army Staff and later with the Pakistan President.

He accused the Indian government of misusing the media to create a “false impression of winning” Jadhav’s case in the ICJ.

“Indian media, backed by the official quarters, misled people in the two countries by propagating that India has won” in Jadhav’s case, he said.

“The discussions that ensued in the two countries showed a complete lack of understanding of the matter,” Zakaria said.

He said the Indian media, based on the reported briefing by official quarters, called ICJ’s letter dated May 8, 2017, the day India filed its petition, to the Pakistan government as a “stay on Jadhav’s execution”.

“This is a lie. The ICJ noted that lie,” he claimed. Jadhav, 46, was in April sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of “involvement in espionage and sabotage activities” against the country.

The ICJ on May 18 stayed the execution of Jadhav. Zakaria said that the ICJ clearly stated that its decision on provisional measures was not concerned with “jurisdiction/ merits” and it considered that Jadhav would not be executed until the full hearing.